Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim has a mountain of problems. He doesn’t have a reliable goalkeeper, his £200m strikeforce is struggling to score goals, and missed penalties are becoming a recurring nightmare. But has his best player, and captain, Bruno Fernandes, become the team’s biggest problem?

As the dust settles on a humiliating Carabao Cup exit against League Two side Grimsby Town — United’s worst defeat in the competition — solving the puzzle of getting the best version of Fernandes might seem trivial in comparison. But it might also be the root of all the issues that are threatening to cost Amorim his job.

Fernandes is United’s talisman. During the club’s disastrous 2024-25 season, when the team finished 15th in the Premier League — their worst position since being relegated in 1974 — and lost the Europa League final against Tottenham, the 30-year-old was still able to contribute 19 goals and 19 assists for United. Without those goals and assists, United could have suffered the ultimate ignominy of being relegated to the EFL Championship.

But while Fernandes is United’s best player, the team continues to perform poorly with him in the team, raising questions about whether he is compatible with Amorim’s 3-4-3 system and whether, despite his talents, he is simply a square peg trying to fit in a round hole.

So, has Manchester United’s best player really become the team’s biggest problem? ESPN’s Mark Ogden and Ryan O’Hanlon, and ESPN FC pundit and former Arsenal and West Ham midfielder Stewart Robson, assess whether Fernandes is a problem United can’t solve and if they would even be better off without him.

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Does Fernandes fit Man United’s system?

Amorim is committed to using the 3-4-3 system at Man United that delivered two league titles during his time as coach at Sporting CP. The only slight deviation is when he sends out United in a 3-4-2-1 setup, but no matter the opposition, Amorim’s team always operates with three at the back and two wing backs alongside two central midfielders.

Fernandes has been used in an advanced role, as one of the two players behind the central forward, or as a central midfielder alongside either Casemiro or Manuel Ugarte. Amorim said earlier this week that Kobbie Mainoo, who emerged as one of the stars of Euro 2024 in England‘s midfield, is battling with Fernandes for a place in the team, which means the pair are unlikely to play together in the midfield two.

Fernandes lacks the tactical discipline to play in a defensive midfield role, with his natural creativity leading him to abandon his deeper position, and Robson says that the system is not suited to his abilities.

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“The 3-4-3 covers all areas of the pitch,” Robson said. “But you’ve got to have the right players to do it. Your wingbacks have to be really athletic and your two central midfield players have to be dynamic and dominant midfield players. United don’t have any of those qualities.

“Bruno just doesn’t fit the system. It’s a bit like the later years of Christian Eriksen at Tottenham under Mauricio Pochettino. Pochettino couldn’t find a position for him.

“He played him on the left of midfield, then in a position off the front, but he couldn’t play in central midfield. He was the odd one out and it’s the same with Fernandes. You need a very dynamic and athletic team to have a player in your side like that.”

With Portugal, who play a 4-2-3-1 formation under Roberto Martinez, Fernandes is deployed in the middle of the three behind the lone striker, with the security of two holding midfielders behind him to do the bulk of the defensive work.

But even while Fernandes continues to look like a player without a natural role in Amorim’s system, he still ended last season with 38 goal involvements for United. — Ogden

Would Fernandes suit the system alongside different players?

Rather than pin the blame on Fernandes being unsuited to the system, does the issue really hinge on the players he has to play alongside in midfield?

Casemiro, Ugarte and Mainoo have been used as one of the two central midfielders next to Fernandes, and they all lack pace and mobility. In Ugarte’s case, the former Paris Saint-Germain player also struggles to distribute the ball successfully.

Fernandes’ strengths are his creativity and attacking instincts, but with such immobile players alongside him in midfield, any burst forward risks leaving United exposed with just one player having to plug the gaps. Those transitions have led to the team being caught out by counterattacking opponents on several occasions.

“If you had Declan Rice next to Fernandes, he could play central midfield,” Robson said. “But if you wanted to build a team around him, you’d have to get new players in. He can’t play in midfield with Casemiro. The Casemiro of 10 years ago, no problem, but not now.”

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United have explored the possibility of a move for Brighton midfielder Carlos Baleba during the summer window, but the prospect of having to pay in excess of £100 million tp sign the 21-year-old Cameroon international halted their interest. Crystal Palace‘s Adam Wharton and Sporting CP’s Morten Hjulmand — a key figure in Amorim’s team with the Portuguese champions — are other targets, but neither is likely to arrive at Old Trafford before Monday’s transfer deadline.

It means Amorim must continue to deploy Fernandes alongside players who are ill-equipped to support him in the defensive midfield role.

“Fernandes can be a very influential player,” Robson said. “But he needs to be in a team that dominates possession, and United aren’t doing that at the moment. Kevin De Bruyne was able to display his brilliance at Manchester City because they controlled every game they played.” — Ogden

Could Fernandes be a weak link?

There are defensive frailties to Fernandes’ game — an issue addressed by Portugal coach Martinez, who plays him in an attacking role — because he lacks the discipline to stay in his position. There have also been occasions when his lack of emotional control has affected his performances.

After a 7-0 defeat at Liverpool in March 2023, during Erik ten Hag’s reign as manager, former United captain Roy Keane said Fernandes’ “body language was nothing short of disgraceful,” while another ex-United skipper, Gary Neville, described Fernandes as “embarrassing.”

That defeat was perhaps the worst example of Fernandes’ petulance when things are going against his team, but it is not the only one. As recently as last Sunday, ESPN pundit Craig Burley lambasted Fernandes for his claim that referee Chris Kavanagh had failed to apologize for bumping into him while preparing to take a penalty, which he missed, against Fulham.

“What a wingy, whiny, little moaning pain in the butt. What an embarrassment, what an embarrassment to a professional footballer,” Burley said. “I thought it was beyond embarrassing, it was childish, school playground stuff. It beggars belief, it really does.”

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From a football perspective, Fernandes’ habit of chasing the game and doing too much has been identified by Amorim, who says it is down to his captain lacking “trust” in his teammates.

“Sometimes, when we’re not playing well, he changes position and goes after the ball,” Amorim said after Fernandes scored a hat trick in last season’s 4-1 Europa League win against Real Sociedad. “But sometimes, he needs to trust a little bit more in his teammates to allow them to do their job and help him to play better.

“When we need him, he’s always there. He’s a perfect captain for our team. We need to help him to win titles because he’s a legend.”

For Robson, however, Fernandes’ lack of athleticism is what holds him back as a midfielder in the United team. “I don’t think you can play modern football and be a world-class player if you can’t run,” Robson said. “When people talk about world-class footballers, they are always people that could run.

“As a player, he wants to make things happen and wants to get on the ball, which is to his credit, but when things go wrong and the team are hurting, he is usually somewhere where he shouldn’t be. If the game gets stretched, Bruno will make things happen with the ball, but he can’t defend well enough. That’s a problem when you are being counterattacked and you see him chugging back. He’s not athletic enough to get back.

“To get the best out of him, I’d play him on the left side of a midfield three, but more advanced, with two more defensive players. But we know Amorim isn’t going to do that.” — Ogden

The benefits of Fernandes

If we simplified the sport down into its basic, component, on-ball parts, we’d land somewhere around here: There’s shooting, there’s creating chances, there’s moving the ball up the field, and there’s winning back possession.

Let’s start with shooting — and scoring. Since the start of last season in the Premier League, Fernandes has attempted 96 shots for Manchester United — 12 more than the soon-to-be-gone Alejandro Garnacho. He has scored eight goals — tied with Amad Diallo for the team lead — and he has generated 7.8 non-penalty expected goals, 0.5 more than Garnacho.

How about creating chances then? If we look at expected-goals assists (the xG value of every shot attempted from a player’s passes), he has 8.8 — 3.8 more than Diallo. And if we look at expected assists (the combined likelihood that every pass a player made would become a goal, whether or not the receiver decided to attempt a shot), it is 8.3 for Fernandes, 4.2 for Diallo. United have attempted 146 shots within two actions of a completed pass by Fernandes — 78 more than any other player.

While Fernandes isn’t necessarily beating many players one-vs.-one, he’s still carrying a heavy load when it comes to moving the ball forward. He has dribbled 4,077 total yards toward the opponent goal since the start of last season — again, significantly more than Garnacho’s second-best mark of 3,245 yards. As for passing the ball up the field, he has completed 340 progressive passes (227 more than any other United player), 225 passes into the final third (100 more than any teammate) and 87 passes into the penalty area (49 more than the club’s next-best).

All right, so he’s getting on the end of more shots than anyone else, he’s creating better chances than anyone else and he’s moving the ball upfield way more often than anyone else. Surely, he’s taking a break once United lose the ball, and that must have some downstream effects on how the team defends, right?

Wrong! Only Noussair Mazraoui made more tackles + interceptions (149) than Fernandes’ 115 since the start of last season, and no one came close to the 227 times the United captain has recovered a loose ball. Oh, and per data from Gradient, Fernandes pressured an opposing player more often last season than any other player in the Premier League.

Is it a sign of club-wide dysfunction when one player is doing everything more often than everyone else? Absolutely. But if United ever do decide to move on from Fernandes, they won’t just be replacing a single player. They’ll be replacing their most dangerous goal scorer, their most creative passer, their most important player in buildup and their most active defensive presence. — O’Hanlon

Should Man United rebuild without Fernandes?

There has been long-standing interest in Fernandes from Saudi Pro League clubs dating to the summer of 2024, when he seriously considered a move away from Old Trafford before eventually signing a new three-year contract. Al Hilal offered Fernandes a lucrative deal to move to Saudi Arabia earlier this summer, with United prepared to listen to offers of around £100 million, but Fernandes once again rejected the chance to move to the Middle East.

Al Ittihad are the latest Saudi club to make a proposal to Fernandes ahead of a possible late move before the deadline, but it appears unlikely that attempt will succeed. But with United in need of transfer funds to rebuild the squad, would it really be a hammer blow to lose Fernandes for a substantial fee?

If Fernandes were to leave, United could move for Baleba and/or Wharton and address the issue of a lack of athleticism in their midfield. Amorim would be without his best player and captain, but perhaps United could become a more well-rounded team.

When asked about the prospect of Fernandes leaving for Al Hilal in May, however, Amorim insisted he wanted Fernandes to stay. “We want to keep the best players,” Amorim said. “And Bruno is clearly one of the top players in the world. We want Bruno here.”

Despite Fernandes’ shortcomings, Robson says that it is difficult to envisage being better without him.

“No, I don’t think it would be better because there’s not enough creativity in the side as it is,” he said. “I don’t see any sort of patterns of play. I don’t really see individual brilliance and I haven’t seen any link or understanding between certain groups of players.

“Really, the answer is the players around Bruno rather than Bruno himself.” — Ogden