Bruno Fernandes apologised to his Manchester United teammates for leaving them in the lurch after being sent off in the 3-0 defeat against Tottenham, but insisted he was wrongly dismissed by the referee.
The attacking midfielder and United captain was shown a straight red card for a knee-height tackle on James Maddison, with the Spurs man poised to surge past him after Fernandes lost his footing.
And while he took responsibility for the hosts being unable to get back into the match as they were down a man, Fernandes doubled down on it being a harsh call, saying the official – Chris Kavanagh – should have been told to revisit his decision by the video assistant.
“Just [I want] to say I let my teammates down, one man down. I appreciate everything was tougher for them,” Fernandes told Sky Sports after the match. “We didn’t start well 11 v 11 and they did very well, we conceded more goals [after] but it was difficult to cover all the spaces. We can take away that the resilience of the team was always there and I’m very proud of them.
“Nobody likes to be sent-off and it’s not a good feeling seeing my teammates run a lot trying to get the result; that’s what they did, they tried everything.
“I don’t take [the decision] as everyone wants to see it, not with my studs. I take him with my ankle,” Fernandes said of his challenge.
“He [Maddison] said it’s a foul but never a red card, that’s what he said. You can see it’s never a red card – we have to look at many other incidents, I get kicked and never see the red card coming so quick.
“It’s a foul, if he wants to give a yellow even as the contact is not that strong. If it’s a yellow because it’s a counter attack I agree but I don’t know why the VAR doesn’t call the referee to the screen.”
Also speaking on Sky after the final whistle, Gary Neville – who had called Man United’s performance “absolutely disgusting” in his match commentary – questioned the committment of the team’s players, following on from earlier comments by Christian Eriksen that Twente players had more desire in the midweek Europa League draw.
“My choice of words is a little unfortunate, all the words I used in commentary – it was all of that in the first half.
“[After the match] Erik ten Hag has talked about two things, pressing and playing out from the back. The pressing element, they drop to what’s deemed a mid-block and I couldn’t work out the trigger for the press in the first minutes. They get caught against half-decent teams playing out, we saw it against Liverpool.
“The players’ application to doing [the job] was abysmal.
“Eriksen’s a respected player, he’s played hundreds of games at the highest level and he’s questioning the attitude of those players. They didn’t put the effort in [today].
“Today has shocked me at how low they’ve gone. That felt like one of those days today where they sank really low.”