On 30 December, during the match between Manchester City and Sheffield United, a rat was seen sprinting across the pitch at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester, England, prompting rival fans to viciously taunt Bruno Fernandes, the captain of Manchester United.
A little rat fleeing across the field made a guest appearance during Manchester City’s 2-0 victory over Sheffield United. The additional living thing on the pitch was hardly noticed by the Citizens as they cruised to victory. Rival supporters, nevertheless, could not miss the rat and continued making fun of United’s Fernandes on social media.
plethora of tweets directed at Fernandes quickly ensued. “Who invited Bruno to the Eithad?” said one user, while another person retorted, “What’s Bruno doing?” A third supporter of Arsenal questioned, “What’s Bruno doing on the pitch?”
Bruno Fernandes probably was not browsing social media just before facing Nottingham Forest on the field at The City Ground in Nottingham, England. However, if that was the case, he needed to maintain some really strong mentality as the wave of trolling was also followed up by Manchester United’s 2-1 loss at the hands of Nottingham Forest on 30 December.
He thinks we can’t see him😭 pic.twitter.com/yJ4IQHycz7
— 𐦆 (@DarrylRMFC) December 30, 2023
Why is Fernandes Compared to a Rat?
Portuguese professional football player Bruno Miguel Borges Fernandes plays attacking midfield for both the Portugal national team and Manchester United in the Premier League. Fernandes’ passing abilities, vision, inventiveness, and penalty-taking technique are well-known and praised by fans and critics alike.
However, football fans have also noticed that he has the ability to be quite obnoxious on the field, whinging at the referee and exaggerating fouls. When he fouls other players, he can also get incredibly irascible and cruel.
There are games where it’s obvious he can play fairly, but there are other games where he acts really ill-mannered and needs someone to calm him down.
On 5 March 2023, when Manchester United lost to Liverpool with a heartbreaking 7-0 scoreline, commentators were disappointed by the “embarrassing” and “disgraceful” conduct of Bruno Fernandes, who was yelling at everyone close by, acting as though he had been struck in the face, pushing an official, trying to express his small frustrations on an opponent’s knee, and ultimately giving up before the match had even finished.
Former Chelsea and Republic of Ireland striker Tony Cascarino shared his opinion on Fernandes with talkSPORT in a March 2022 interview, “When he got a hat-trick [against] Leeds [on the opening day of the 2022 season], you thought, ‘Wow, this is going to be some season for United.’ He frustrates me. He is a talent, but he is always waving his arms about. It feels like he is complaining and moaning about his team all the time in the game.”
Cascarino added, “Don’t get me wrong, Roy Keane did that, but he didn’t wave his arms around. But I would get very annoyed when [Fernandes] turns his back on play and is getting embroiled in other problems while the game is going on.”
Despite all the negative complaints about his character, Fernandes is also regarded as an exceptional football player. With 33 goals in all competitions in 2018–19, he set a record for being both the best-scoring midfielder in Portugal and all of Europe for a single season.
For an original €55 million (£47 million), Fernandes signed with Manchester United in January 2020, earning the second-highest cost for a Portuguese player exiting the local league at the time.
What is the Premier League?
The Premier League is the top division of the English football league system, which is contested by 20 clubs and uses the English Football League’s (EFL) promotion and relegation system.
Every team plays 38 home and away games against every other team throughout the normal August–May season. With a few rare weekday evening matches, the majority of games take place in the afternoons on Saturdays and Sundays.
On February 20, 1992, the First Division (the premier league from 1888 until 1992) clubs decided to secede from the English Football League, which led to the creation of the FA Premier League. However, teams participating in this competition might still be promoted from and demoted to the EFL Championship.
With a potential TV audience of 4.7 billion people due to its partnership with Sky Sports, BBC Sport, TNT Sports, and Amazon Prime Video, the Premier League is the most-watched sports league in the entire world, which is seen and enjoyed in 212 territories across 643 million homes.
