Former striker Chris Sutton does not believe Bruno Fernandes should be the captain of while has also criticised the midfielder’s recent outburst.
The 28-year-old, who took over the armband from axed skipper this summer, cut a frustrated figure in his side’s 2-0 defeat to Tottenham on Saturday and was booked by referee Michael Oliver for dissent.
He was still stewing after the game and in a post-match interview he from refereeing body PGMOL after a penalty was not awarded when Alejandro Garnacho’s first-half shot smashed into Cristian Romero’s outstretched arm.
‘I want to see if Jon Moss also comes to apologise to our dressing room like they said he did to the manager of Wolves,’ said Fernandes afterwards, referring to Moss’ apology for a non-call on Andre Onana last week.
But the Portugal international has now been slammed by former Blackburn and Chelsea striker Sutton, who feels Fernandes’ comments and behaviour are not befitting of the armband.
Asked if the referee was to blame for Fernandes’ unhappy reaction, Sutton replied on the : ‘Absolutely not. Bruno Fernandes first and foremost needs to sort himself out, his team out, before looking at referees and their decisions.
‘Bruno Fernandes for me shouldn’t be captain of Manchester United, absolutely not, he’s not a leader. That basically sums him up.
‘It’s about taking responsibility as a captain and the bottom line is, the first two performances of the season for Manchester United they have looked like a testimonial team.
‘They’re like a team that’s still stuck in pre-season and he needs to turn up and show better leadership qualities – not blaming referees.’
Former Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand was also unimpressed with Fernandes’ post-match comments and felt he used it to deflect away from another abject performance.
Speaking on his , Ferdinand said: ‘I think at this point you’ve just got to be honest, man.
‘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 s**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”.
‘I think that blame stuff, he could have gone down the corridor [to the ref] but that’s hindsight. Go down the corridor, speak to the referee, whatever. But it’s owning that. The performances haven’t been great.
‘It’s easy to say he should have done this or that, when you’re in the moment and you’re hot it’s different.’
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