The Portuguese seems more interested in blaming referees for his team’s troubles than actually getting to the root of the problem
After Tottenham’s 2-0 win over an insipid Manchester United side last week, there was no doubt which Sky Sports pundit would be allowed to speak first. Roy Keane has long been made for great television. He plays his part of the grumpy old man to perfection and specialises in pithy putdowns. But even by Keane’s standards, what followed was brutal.
“I think Man United are the new Spurs,” the Irishman began, before pausing momentarily to allow the weight of his words to resonate. Fellow pundit Andros Townsend filled the silence with a little laugh, but the former United captain was deadly serious. And coming from Keane, the Spurs comparison was the ultimate insult.
During his trophy-laden career, the Premier League’s most dominant midfielder had next-to-no respect for Tottenham. At United, Spurs were not seen as worthy adversaries. The Londoners were considered too weak to win titles, so often beaten before they had even set foot onto the field.
Ahead of one encounter between the two teams at Old Trafford, legendary United manager Sir Alex Ferguson stepped into the dressing room and simply said, “Lads, it’s Tottenham.” Job done, game won.
So, it killed Keane to see how easily United rolled over in the second half of Saturday’s game, and the post-match reaction of Bruno Fernandes only worsened his mood.
‘You know what, we’ve been sh*t’
The Portuguese acknowledged that he had botched an easy first-half header that would have put United 1-0 up, admitting that he had made the mistake of paying more attention to the movements of the goalkeeper than the flight of the ball.
However, Fernandes was more focused on the officials, more interested in shifting the blame off himself and onto the referee and the VAR for the dismal defeat, even going so far as to request an apology for their failure to award the visitors a penalty for a contentious handball call.
Given the dismal nature of the display, and the way in which United had been outfought and overrun in midfield, this was not what the fans wanted to hear, as even the club’s cheerleader-in-chief Rio Ferdinand conceded.
“I think at this point you’ve just got to be honest, man,” the former United defender told Vibe with Five. “I understand why he’s upset, but he probably would have got more out of it by coming out there and going, ‘You know what, we’ve been sh*t, we ain’t been up to the level we expect ourselves to be at and we need to get better, be better and do more.’
“Go down the corridor, speak to the referee, whatever. But it’s about owning that [defeat]. Because the performances haven’t been great.” Particularly away from home against even half-decent opposition.
‘Weak again. No leadership’
United may have improved since Erik ten Hag took over last year, evening winning a trophy in February, but their record on the road is rotten. Under the Dutchman, they’ve yet to beat a single top-eight Premier League team in their own backyard, which helps explain why Keane – and countless other United fans – are so disillusioned with the side, given their qualities and potential are obvious at Old Trafford.
“They’re a good team when they fancy it, when their fans are up for it at home and they’ve got that support and that energy,” Keane said on Saturday. “But United went away today and they were weak again. No leadership.”
That last point is key. Keane clearly doesn’t recognise the United of today. It is a million miles away from the team he knew, and loved, as a player.
‘Whingeing wasn’t an option here’
Keane is undeniably a flawed character, as he has so often admitted himself. He let United down several times on and off the field during his playing days. He was no fan of officials either and would sometimes spend his Saturday afternoons chasing them around Old Trafford. He also took several shots at David Elleray in his autobiography, given the referee had sent him off four times.
However, each self-induced injury, suspension or brush with the law hit him hard because he was well aware of the honour and responsibility that comes with representing (what was once) a proud institution.
Indeed, whatever one may say about Keane, he never failed to understand what it means to wear the United shirt – or what it takes to achieve consistent success at the very highest level. Because he learned from the best.
Before he’d even played a game at Old Trafford following his record-making move from Nottingham Forest in the summer of 1993, he could see why United were the reigning Premier League champions. Ferguson had assembled a group of players who were not only talented but immensely motivated. A young Keane was dumbstruck by the drive and determination of men like Bryan Robson and Steve Bruce.
“Whingeing wasn’t an option here,” he later wrote in his autobiography. “The demoralisation that hung around the Forest dressing room, the moaning and groaning, the loser-talk that sapped so many spirits at the City Ground was noticeable by its absence. What was there to moan about? These players believe they were playing for the best club in the world.”
Keane believed that too, and he impressed upon every single new player that arrived at Old Trafford after being named club captain following the departure of Eric Cantona in 1997. Whenever he saw the slightest drop in standards, he lashed out – repeatedly, and so vociferously that it eventually led to his exit.
Hard work will beat talent – if talent doesn’t work hard
However, even though his time at United came to an abrupt end, he is still universally regarded as the finest captain in the club’s history because of the integral role he played in transmitting his – and Ferguson’s – insatiable thirst for trophies to his team-mates.
Nowadays, Keane is sometimes seen – and even dismissed – as a man from a bygone era. It’s argued that his ideas are archaic; that he fails to grasp the nuances of modern football. Keane has long argued that the game’s determining factors, the differences between winning and losing, are “mundane”, that the devil is in the detail – but that’s as true now as it ever was.
Everyone at the highest level is incredibly talented – but not everyone plays with the same level of professionalism or passion. It is those attributes that are decisive. Manchester City, for example, don’t just play better football than all of their rivals, they also work harder. Pep Guardiola isn’t just a master-tactician either, he’s also an amazing man-manager.
Admittedly, money helps – a lot – but United have plenty of their own, and have wasted so much of it since Ferguson retired a decade ago buying bad players with even worse characters. Consequently, it is City who are now viewed as the standard-bearers in English football – not United. Even worse, United are now seen as weak, a team that can be easily overwhelmed.
‘Lets f*cking give it to them!’
When Newcastle hosted Ten Hag’s team last season, Eddie Howe told his players, “If they want a quick game, coming here, let’s f*cking give it to them! Let’s blow them away with our running.” And they did, romping their way to a fully deserved 2-0 win.
Of course, years of gross mismanagement and a total absence of strong leadership at boardroom level has hardly helped matters – as the botched handling of the Mason Greenwood affair painfully underlined.
So, Ten Hag and Fernandes cannot be held in any way accountable for things that they have no control over. However, they do need to start accepting their share of the blame for the lack of organisation and determination we’re seeing on the pitch. Ten Hag clearly has to address the make-up of his team, particularly in the middle of the park, while Fernandes must stop trying to deflect attention away from his failings and those of his team-mates.
When United are struggling, Fernandes spends far too much time remonstrating with officials and complaining about misplaced passes. His conduct during last season’s humiliating 7-0 loss at Liverpool was especially embarrassing.
“Bruno’s body language today was nothing short of disgraceful,” Keane told Sky after United’s woeful defeat at Anfield in March, “A really talented boy but he’s your captain and his body language – waving his arms around, not running back – you wouldn’t be happy with him in your dressing room.” And yet Ten Hag made the Portuguese his captain.
Whinger rather than a winner
Then again, it’s not as if there were many other strong candidates. As Keane pointed out, it says everything about the lack of leaders at United that Fernandes’ predecessor, Harry Maguire, was made captain less than six months after joining from Leicester. “That doesn’t say much about the group”, Keane correctly pointed out.
Fernandes is a damn fine player and his desperation to succeed is evident in every single game. But he’s almost been made captain by default, the best of a bad bunch, and he has yet to prove himself the right man for the job.
He’s not been dealt a great hand with the players he’s been surrounded by – there’s no getting away from that – but Fernandes is not doing himself any favours with his moaning, on and off the field. He needs to start looking at what he can do better to make this team better.
As Keane once wrote, “The last thing footballers will do is look at themselves. Yet sometimes – no, always – that’s where the answer lies. If you’re good enough, defeat is usually down to yourself. Not the referee, or luck, or a deflection, comforting though all those excuses are. This is where the real pros, the likes of Bryan Robson, Steve Bruce or Denis Irwin, are invaluable. They know where to look for answers.”
Fernandes, though, too often looks and sounds more like a whinger than a winner, and United need more from their captain, much more in fact, if they are to start competing for league titles again.
Because when Keane arrived at Old Trafford 20 years ago, he saw a team of champions. Now, he sees Spurs – and there is no more damning indictment of the decline of Manchester United than that.