Solskjaer shares one thing £47m Manchester United man must change about himself

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Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is convinced Bruno Fernandes is captain material but says the Manchester United skipper must learn to control his passions at times.

With almost every defeat Manchester United suffer – and there’s been no shortage of those during a disastrous second season under Erik ten Hag – the same old narratives re-occur.

Is Bruno Fernandes really the right man to wear the armband for the Red Devils? Bruno Fernandes, with his arm-waving, his referee-badgering, his penchant for play-acting?

Even Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, the man who brought Fernandes to Old Trafford from Sporting Lisbon back in 2020, has to admit that the £47 million Portugal international can let emotion get the better of him at times, even if he remains convinced of his ‘captain’s qualities’.

Solskjaer shares advice to Manchester United captain

“I knew Bruno Fernandes had captain qualities when I was manager at Manchester United,” Solskjaer explains on The Overlap’s Stick to Football podcast.

“He’s got the personality and quality. But he knows – and I’ve told him – that he’s too passionate at times and he loses a bit of control.”

Fernandes was handed the armband on a permanent basis by Ten Hag last summer after the Dutchman stripped Harry Maguire of the captaincy.

In truth, this is not a Man United squad chock-full with obvious candidates for such a role, Solskjaer adding that his Red Devils side – many of whom remain today – lacked the personality to take on a leadership role at arguably world football’s most iconic sporting institution.

“No one said ‘no’ to being the club captain,” Solskjaer adds. “(But they turned it down) for certain games.

“They didn’t want to say it themselves. They had other people come up to me and say it. It was disappointing. It’s a different generation, it’s Gen Z. It’s petty and shows a lack of ambition.”

Bruno Fernandes likely to keep the armband

Some of Fernandes’ fellow elder statesmen, Casemiro, Christian Eriksen and Raphael Varane, are perhaps the other obvious candidates to take over the armband. But all three are expected to depart in the summer.

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