Bruno Fernandes blames attitude for Manchester derby defeat

Bruno Fernandes wants his Manchester United teammates to use the pain of Sunday’s 6-3 defeat against rivals Manchester City as fuel for improvement after blaming the attitude shown by players at the weekend.

The Portugal international believes belief was lacking, which is something I touched on in my post-match article, and the gap was clear to see between the two sides.

Manchester City are years ahead of us and Erik ten Hag will come away from it knowing more about the job on his hands.

Bruno Fernandes didn’t have one of his better games, as one of the many players who gave away possession cheaply on too many occasions, but he is trying to rally the troops in the dressing room with his latest quotes.

“I think the attitude and the belief from the beginning was not the best and I think it was that that caused us many problems and made us concede early goals,” Fernandes told reporters after the match, as per Yahoo News.

“After we have to run back the result and obviously I think the second half was much better.

“We keep control more, we control more the game. Whenever we have the ball we are more brave.

“Obviously we’re down on the result, so we had to take some risks – and obviously when you take that risk you score straight away, you try to go a little bit more (attacking) and you concede more goals. Against teams like City, you can’t give that much space to them.

“Obviously we are really disappointed but now it’s time to focus on the next game and understand that we have to get back in the performances that we did before – in the belief and everything, in the togetherness principle – and understand that this cannot get us down.”

City put an end to United’s four-match win steak, but we must dust ourselves off and move on. There’s a lot of football to play this month and our focus needs to be on gaining maximum points.

Next up in the Premier League is a trip to Everton, who are unbeaten in their last 8 games under Frank Lampard. Goodison Park can be a difficult place to go to but United can’t have any excuses this weekend.

The Reds need to pick themselves up as soon as possible.