For a moment all is silence. Bruno Fernandes stands poised. Old Trafford pauses with him. Fernandes waits. There’s two sidesteps to the left, and a leap as he feigns to shoot. Then the rippling of the net.
It takes a certain confidence in a player to take a crucial penalty in only your third Manchester United performance. Miss and you’re the pinata for all United fans’ disappointment from their first half performance. But to be fair, Fernandes never looked like a man who was about to miss.
For 40 minutes here United were underwhelming, making no clear-cut chances and it was in fact Watford who took the game to the home side, but for all their hard work and determination lacked the composure and end product to punish United’s mistakes.
The penalty that came was an excellent chance for Fernandes to give off those first impressions, dispatching a penalty with such effortlessness ease to give confirmation that the club have a new penalty taker in town. The calmness he showed was perhaps some flickering future vision of the forthcoming years, and an air of relief after recent travails from both Rashford and Martial. After all, Fernandes has scored 19 of his 21 career penalty kicks. “I wasn’t in doubt about what he would do.” Ole Gunnar Solskjaer said.
It was also the goal that set United on their way to a valuable three points, albeit with a help in hand from VAR, after Craig Dawson was adjudged to have handled the ball in the build-up to Deeney’s equaliser.
The game may have been different had VAR not intervened, nor if Deeney had punished a defensive mix-up between Harry Maguire and Nemanja Matic in the third minute. The Watford captain took one touch too many when through on goal and scuppered his opportunity. Once in front though, United were much improved.
The home side instead took their chances here and it was Fernandes at the heart of two second half goals. United’s new £60m playmaker was brought in with the prime objective of finally offering a creative spark between the midfield and attacking transitions and had great joy in doing so on the deep green of this stage, his new home.
Fernandes is a man to whom the ball itself seems mechanically attracted. After providing Anthony Martial with a lovely weighted pass for United’s second, United’s main man again found himself in space before the final goal, after Mason Greenwood shimmied his way through the midfield collisions. Fernandes gave the ball back to the 18-year-old, who finished emphatically.
It was these two second half goals that one got a glimpse of how this United midfield is going to work for a little while: Fernandes creating, Fred lurking, Matic bolting the gate. The Portuguese midfielder has immediately brought not only more skill and creativity to the United midfield, but also more belief in the players around him.
In the modern game, after all, it is your midfield which dictates the way you are going to play. The lone central pivot, Fernandes in this instance, provides a complete midfield janitorial service, constantly liaising with teammates and working with the ebbs and flows of the game, to keep all the cogs and mechanisms whirring.
In many ways, every club needs their Bruno Fernandes, their Phil Foden, their Jack Grealish who foreshadow the clubs route forward. For years, United’s midfield has long lagged behind the other top 6 clubs, but the fans’ heartfelt embrace of Bruno so far hints at a new dawn being on the horizon.
In the flesh Fernandes is simply beautiful to watch, an acutely diminutive figure who seems to flounce across the turf without leaving an imprint. A drop of the shoulders here, a flick there. You wonder what he is going to do next. And for a moment all is silence.
Alex's Sports Column 