The sparkle of Bruno Fernandes is wasted at Manchester United ...Middle East

Chelsea fans sing about “keeping the blue flag flying high” at Stamford Bridge, but the most significant flag on Friday night was the white one waved by Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim after 82 minutes when he took off Bruno Fernandes, his only credible threat.

Fergie time is dead and gone, even with just a one-goal deficit. It’s now Amorim time, the point in the fixture where players are rested for games United can actually win.

You can sympathise with Amorim’s position, given the golden carrot of Champions League football dangled by Wednesday’s Europa League final. It is United’s only hope of salvaging their historically poor season, and add extra impetus to the next campaign. Losing 1-0 to Chelsea made little difference to that.

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Manchester United have dominated Chelsea in recent years, losing just once in the league since 2017, but were 11/2 underdogs this time around, another unnecessary reminder of how far the Red Devils have fallen.

They briefly threatened to buck those odds, Harry Maguire giving them the lead before being ruled inches offside, and Mason Mount spurning a decent chance to silence the boo boys at his old club. But for every United chance, Chelsea had two more, but their own lack polish only added to the overall feeling of mediocrity at Stamford Bridge.

The exception was, and has been all season, United’s captain Fernandes and in pursuit of points that meant a lot more to Chelsea, the skipper gave Spurs a preview of what he will hope to do to them on Wednesday in Bilbao.

Within three minutes, a delightfully dangerous ball was cut out by a Chelsea head with Rasmus Hojlund, a mannequin where as striker should be, unable to attack it sufficiently.

Just 13 minutes later, United’s most effective striker Maguire stayed up after a corner, and Fernandes found an angle that no one else in a United shirt ever could have. He turned a straight-line cross into an arcing, pinpoint pass that evaded the defence and which even his centre-back could not fail to convert, but for the assistant’s flag.

Poor as United were, they were at least “competitive,” their manager said, desperately clutching at straws. There’s a phrase about not being able to polish it but instead rolling it in glitter? Fernandes was the glitter, providing glints of silver in the form of insightful passes and clever turns that sparkled amid United’s dull inadequacy.

So it has been all year. In the Premier League, he is United’s leading goalscorer (eight) and assist-maker (nine). Amad Diallo is closest, four back with 13 goal contributions, but everyone else’s total is less than half of Fernandes’s.

In the Europa League, the Portuguese midfielder has been equally prolific, and in March he became the all-time leader in the competition for goals and assists combined.

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But it is still Europe’s second tier of club competition. Fernandes deserves to be doing it in the Champions League, added motivation if any were needed in the Basque Country on Wednesday. With Fernandes, it is rarely needed.

Of course the logical next step for such a player is to leave Old Trafford. He would not be short of suitors. But contrary to my esteemed colleague Kevin Garside’s suggestion of using Fernandes as the saleable asset to pay for the rebuild, it seems to me that United cannot afford to let him go.

Any summer conversations with a much-needed striker will surely start with “is he staying?”, because even the best forwards require service, and there are few other creators.

And United need so much more than just a new centre forward. For starters, they probably need two and then some wing-backs, a goalkeeper, a centre-half and who knows what else. Fernandes meanwhile is already and may not have enough legs left to last the whole rebuild.

So there is the tension. The more United need him, the more he needs to leave United.

What Bruno does next will always be worth watching, either way.

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