Bruno Fernandes exerted his influence again for Man United to score a hat-trick against Real Sociedad in the Europa League.
Ruben Amorim dubbed Bruno Fernandes a “perfect captain” who Manchester United players must help win more trophies.
Fernandes scored his second hat-trick for United in their Europa League round-of-16 victory over Real Sociedad to take his goals tally for the season to 15, his joint-second best haul for United.
The 30-year-old captained United to League Cup and FA Cup triumphs under Erik ten Hag but United have largely underachieved since Fernandes signed from Sporting in January 2020.
Fernandes has scored four of United’s last six goals and the team would be 17th in the Premier League without his goal contributions.
“We already spoke about Bruno a lot of times,” Amorim said. “We know sometimes he’s frustrated, we know he wants to win so badly that sometimes when we are not playing well he’s changing position and goes after the ball. And sometimes he needs to trust and to allow them to do their job and to help him play better.
“But when we need it he’s always there: set pieces, he can change position, he can bring the ball forward, he can score goals, he can make transitions like he showed today in the last ten minutes of the game, he can defend.
“He’s a perfect captain for our team and we need to help him to win titles because he deserves a lot.”
Amorim was also pleased with the performance of winter transfer window signing Patrick Dorgu. The left winger won a penalty and his charge into the Sociedad half led to the second-half dismissal of Jon Aramburu for the deliberate denial of a goalscoring opportunity.
Dorgu went down again inside the penalty area late on with United 2-1 ahead and initially received a penalty but told the French referee, Benoît Bastien, that it was not a spotkick. The decision was overturned.
When asked whether he approved of Dorgu’s sportsmanship, Amorim replied: “It depends. It’s the right thing to do, so I’m quite proud of him. But I can’t say if it’s 0-0 or losing if I have the same response.
“He did well, he did a great performance, he was improving during the game, he’s learning a lot in that position, he has the physicality to play in our league, so it was a good game and a good action from Dorgu.”
United recovered from conceding in the tenth minute to Mikel Oyarzabal’s penalty to eventually prevail 5-2 on aggregate in one of their most enterprising performances under Amorim.
“I felt during the week that we showed that we are ready for this kind of game,” Amorim added. “Our exhibition against Arsenal was not beautiful but helped us a lot, that second half helped us to believe and I felt the team was full of confidence.
“We suffer a goal but continue to play the same thing and since the first minute we believe we can go to the next stage. But this is also a different competition. The physicality of our team made a great difference in these two games.”