Fernandes drags angry Man Utd boss Ten Hag away after rant at referee vs Arsenal

Bruno Fernandes had his work cut out in his first game as Manchester United captain. The Portuguese star had to pull away his own manager Erik ten Hag from the fourth official after the Dutchman gave him a piece of his mind.

It appears Ten Hag’s fury stemmed from the officials not awarding his side a penalty on the stroke of halftime. But it didn’t make much of an impact as Man Utd soundly defeated Arsenal 2-0 in the United States.

A record crowd of 82,262 witnessed United deliver the best performance of their pre-season campaign so far at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Fernandes opened up the scoring at the half-hour mark with a strike from outside of the box that wrong-footed Aaron Ramsdale between the sticks.

Jadon Sancho then quickly doubled the Red Devils’ lead seven minutes later as he pounced on a mistake from Gabriel Magalhaes. To add further insult to injury, United then went on to beat Arsenal 5-3 in a post-match penalty shoot-out.

Speaking after the game, Ten Hag praised his side’s excellent performance. “I think it’s very good. The way we played, I was really pleased, how active we were in and out of possession,” he said.

“That is the way we want to play and that is the only period of the year you can really work in training and translate it to games without it having consequences. But still, we want to win, and I think the lads showed we played a good game.”

He added: “I think we did well, and we want to be like that: we want to be a pressing machine, so then you have to do everything in togetherness. That is so important, and today, we did it in both halves.

“Arsenal is a really good opponent. They played incredibly good last season in the Premier League, so yeah, that’s good to match with them, then you will be better.”

Man Utd are now set to play Wrexham on Wednesday followed by further friendlies against Real Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, Lens and Athletic Bilbao before opening up their Premier League campaign versus Wolves on August 14.