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Manchester United captain Bruno Fernandes has launched a passionate defence of teammate Andre Onana after the goalkeeper made another mistake in the 3-2 Europa League win over Viktoria Plzen.
Onana started the game under scrutiny, following a woeful performance in last weekend’s 3-2 defeat at the hands of Nottingham Forest.
Against Forest, Onana made two costly errors that dearly cost his side, the most notable of which was allowing a Morgan Bibbs-White shot to go straight past him.
This time, away to Plzen, Onana completely miscalculated a pass out from the back to Matthis de Ligt. The pass was intercepted by an opposition player, who proceeded to guide it into the path of Matej Vydra. Vydra made no mistake from close range to give the Czech First League outfit the lead.
Luckily for Onana, substitute Rasmus Hojlund produced a superb second-half brace to spare his and United’s blushes.
Amidst concerns over Onana’s wobbly performances in recent games, Fernandes told TNT Sports [via BBC], “We want to play from the back and everyone knows that then we have to make the right decision on the pitch.”
“Andre [Onana] thought that Matta [De Ligt] could get on the ball but he missed it and they scored a goal.”
“It is not about Andre making the mistake, we don’t look at individuals here when something happens on the wrong side. We have huge belief in him.”
“He knows he made a mistake because he is a clever guy, he is going to help us many times and we trust his qualities on the ball.”
Fernandes added, “Mistakes are part of football. If they don’t happen then goals don’t happen. But we did well to show the resilience to come back and find the victory.”
On the result, Fernandes said, “It was a good performance overall. I think in the final third we could have kept the ball a bit more but the man-marking from them was difficult to get away from.”
“Sometimes you just have to pass and run to try to find the gaps in behind.”
“In the first half we did it better than in the second half, when we let the game go a little bit in the way that they wanted, a bit more transitional. Then we dealt with that and in the end we got the win.”
United have two matches left in the Europa League group stage, both scheduled for January. The Red Devils welcome Rangers to Old Trafford before concluding on the road in Bucharest, Romania, to take on FCSB on January 30.
Featured image Gabriel Kuchta via Getty Images
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