Bruno Fernandes exclusive: There’s no way we don’t believe in Ruben Amorim’s plan for Man Utd | Football news

Bruno Fernandes is exhausted; his legs were a little heavy and his mind exhausted from the “suffering” required to knock Arsenal out of the FA Cup on penalties, having been a man down for less than 62 minutes.

It is no wonder that the captain of Manchester United entered his training base Carrington exhausted: he was the scorer, the first in the shot, and with his ruthless performance was also connected his role of delivering “flowers” – honors, recognition and thanks – to deserving teammates.

After the win at the Emirates, Bruno turned the focus away from himself to a colossal display from Altay Bayindir, who produced a goalkeeping masterclass, especially from the spot, and Joshua Zirkzee’s redemptive arc.

“I like everyone to be happy. I want everyone to feel a part, to feel included,” says Fernandes Sky Sports News the morning after the victory before.

“When you’re in a good moment, a high moment, I prefer to give it to other players – not because I don’t want to have that moment, because obviously every player wants to have their merits, their flowers and their moments of joy – but this is just the way I live your life.

“I really think for a team to be successful, everyone has to be at the same level of satisfaction. Even knowing that some players will play less than others, you have to find a way to push them at certain times to feel that they are as important as I am.”

Fernandes was particularly pleased for Zirkzee, who endured the ignominy of being hauled off in the 33rd minute of the defeat to Newcastle amid cheers from his own fans but slotted home the decisive penalty to keep the defending champions in the tournament.

“The script has been around for a long time,” smiles Bruno. “You know, when you’re a good person, when you do the right things, you can have bad moments, but in the end everything will come out strong.

“It was the decision of the staff to pick five players to get a penalty and they put Josh last. And the only thing I could think of was to tell the players that the script was over. So it’s all over from that moment on against Newcastle who prepared us to, in this moment, give Josh his moment and his recognition and his flowers.

“We can talk about whatever people want, like ‘penalties, that’s easy’. That’s how we got to the penalty, Altay saved the penalty [in normal time] from Martin Odegaard who has yet to miss a single one in his professional career. And then Josh, in a moment of pressure with everything he’s been through in his mind, steps up and brings us the win.”

It was more than the story of United’s triumph, with the ‘how’ and ‘who’ providing further evidence of Ruben Amorim’s theory that the problem is not his system, but effort and application.

The way his side worked the ball against Arsenal and increased their resolve rather than wilting when Diogo Dalot was sent off was encouraging. Following on from a hard-fought draw at Anfield in a game they could have stolen at the death against Liverpool, United look to be painting a portrait of a resurgence.

Bruno, however, warns that the brush strokes against each team, not just the club’s rivals, will decide whether the painting is finished or an artificial illusion.

“We can’t look at the names, we can’t look at the badges, we can’t look at the table, whoever is ahead or below us. We just have to look at ourselves and realize that we are playing for a huge club and we have to set a standard for ourselves that this is where we want to be minimal and where we have to go further to get the best out of everyone.”

Resistance against Liverpool and Arsenal followed a long spell at Carrington to work on Amorim’s plan. Interestingly, Bruno goes towards the rise of psychological elements as a bigger explanation for these performances.

“It always helps when you have time to train and prepare a little more for games,” he offers. “It’s important, but I think in these two games it was more about – and the manager told us this – more about the passion, the desire, everything you put into the game in terms of how much you want to win the game.

“I think everyone is really aware of what they want and ask of us positionally, tactically and everything. I think now we’re getting into the level that he wants hard, with running and passion and wanting to win. I think we still have a lot to improve in both aspects, but I’m pretty sure we’re on the right track.

“But now we’ve got a massive game that everyone could look at in a different way and probably look from the outside and say, ‘United are in a good moment now. They’ve got Southampton at home. They’re going to beat them for sure, but we can’t think like that because Southampton are fighting for their lives.

“They want to stay in the Premier League and they really need points. But we have to turn this around and look at ourselves and say that we really, really, really need points more than them. We have to think ‘we need points more than them’ and that it has to be our goal in every game we go through, and the opponent needs it more than them.”

United has certainly been brought back to life, to action, to a sense of pride. At Anfield, Lisandro Martinez pointed to his head to explain what a difference it made to the team. Bruno’s verses about mentality and intention are from the same book. Was Amorim’s relegation reality check the spark?

“No, no, no,” laughs Bruno before returning to serious mode. “Obviously I know what the manager meant and what Licha (Martinez) said is right – it’s about mentality. You go to a game against Liverpool and you know it’s a big game. You’ll be ready for every one. Your mind will remember every detail that the manager told you; every thing they did, every thing we trained.

“And probably in some games where you don’t play against big teams and you think you don’t need to be so aware and you probably mentally separate yourself for five seconds. And in the Premier League, five seconds is too much against And Southampton is one of those games where you don’t I want any of us to separate even for five seconds because they have good players, they have qualities.

“They could have taken more points than they have on the table. I’m not saying that they are a big team. That they are a team that is better than us and we shouldn’t win the game. We have to win the game. We should worry about every moment and every second throughout the game , because if we do that, and then the way we prepare the game, tactically and technically, if we do what we’ve been doing, I’m pretty sure we’ll win the game.”

United’s perceived improvements were in their intensity and defensive form. If there’s one area where Amorim has yet to see big strides, it’s on offense.

“The manager told us a lot that we need to score more goals,” Bruno nods. “And that’s right because we are a team that has the ability to score goals. I know we have a lot of young players up front, but we have quality and we have to score goals because Rasmus is capable of scoring goals. Josh is capable, Amad is capable, Garnacho Rashy, Antony, well even the midfielders who sometimes play a bit deeper like Kobbie or Manu or Case or Christian, they are all players with goals in them.

“So we have a lot of players who have the ability to score goals. Like yesterday, Carlos came to talk to me – the assistant manager before the game – telling me that we need more desire to run into the penalty area, that running, to go on the counter, we need to run little out of it Garnacho returns the ball, then Garna jumps Gabriel was on my mind, ‘just run as fast as you can to get into the box because you know Garna is fast and he’ll get there before you need me to score.’ And that desire to defend our goal has to be the same desire to score goals and that’s something the manager wants us to improve and I think we have a lot to improve because we have so much quality in our team to score more what we’ve been showing is not really the level we have .”

The clouds have lifted in part because of a dark spell for United, where they were just seven points clear of the relegation zone and went into the new year in their worst league position since 1989.

“It’s really easy when you don’t get the results, when you don’t get the performance, you start to lose faith in everything you’ve been doing,” says Bruno, adding: “but I think that was one of the good things we had as a team – we kept faith in what what we’re doing, what we’ve been training for and where we want to go as a team, where the staff wants us to go as a team, what we want to improve as a team.

“And that’s what gives us even more credit now because we’ve been doing the same things that people will probably think, ‘oh, the manager has to change this back three or five, it’s not working. We need to get another striker back.’

“You know, every time you lose or every time something goes wrong, everybody has an opinion about what you should do differently. But obviously the manager has his own idea and we understand that. What we as players really understand at the moment is that he really believes this, so there’s no way he’s going to make you disbelieve.

“So everything he tells you, everything he tries to convey to you — to him and his staff — he does it in a way that makes us really believe in what we’re doing. Even in games where you concede a goal or have a setback or whatever, he just he wants us to understand that the things we do will bring results if we do them the right way.

“And that’s the most important thing we’ve had in this period of not getting results. It’s been tough. Like you said, it’s really tough here when we’re not winning, but it’s massive and brilliant when you’re winning here too.

“So we’ve just got to realize that if we can keep up this level, this performance, and obviously get results, the fans will be behind us. There’s going to be a lot of pressure on us, like there was yesterday – 8,000 at the Emirates.

“And we have to bring back what we had in the past where every team that came here felt the fear of any moment that United could score or hurt them. And we have to bring that back together with the fans, with the patience that we need to have as a team in order to believe in the process, we need the fans to have the same patience, to believe in the players because they can do it every three days and we want to do it. And we need them to be behind us to do it.”

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