Manchester United suffered a 3-0 away defeat to Manchester City. In this match, Bruno Fernandes was once again deployed in a deeper midfield role, rather than the attacking midfielder position he is more familiar with. After the game, in an interview, he openly talked about the match result—admitting that the team’s performance fell short of expectations, while also explaining the team’s tactical approach for the game and the issues exposed behind the first conceded goal.
“I tried to press Rodri at that moment, because the tactic we planned before the game was to have one midfielder press Rodri, while assigning a defender to mark Phil Foden specifically.
“At the start, I could barely handle the defense against both of them. But then Jadon Sancho decided to push forward to join the press. When I saw him, I also tried to move a bit closer to Rodri. But just at that moment, Josko Gvardiol played a precise pass, and Sancho was in the process of dropping back to readjust. There was a communication error between us, which gave the opponent too much space to push forward.
“I think we must dare to take more risks in attack, and the defense also needs to push forward more decisively. If you look closely at Manchester City’s defense, you’ll notice that every time we played the ball back to our center-backs, they immediately formed a 3v3 defensive situation, with their defense compressed very tightly. At that point, it became extremely difficult for us to break through their defense, because the attacking space on the pitch was just too narrow.
Regarding the team’s use of a five-at-the-back system, he further added: “We used a five-at-the-back system in this game—call it whatever you want—but one thing is clear: we need someone to maintain sufficient aggression when pressing, and the timing of stepping up to press must be decisive.
“Throughout the game, Manchester City basically used four midfielders to counter our two. In this situation, it requires teammates behind to step up in time to cover and join the press, just like Luke Shaw did then. In fact, we also did this in the first game against Arsenal; at that time, they couldn’t even organize effective attacks smoothly. This is the key to compressing the opponent’s attacking space. If you don’t dare to do this, the game will definitely be very difficult.”
