Bruno Fernandes matched the Premier League single-season assist record as Manchester United edged Nottingham Forest 3-2 at Old Trafford. The captain now has a final 90 minutes against Brighton & Hove Albion next Sunday to move beyond the mark.<\/p>\n
Luke Shaw opened the scoring inside the first five minutes with a low drive into the bottom corner. Forest responded with pressure; Bryan Mbeumo struck the post midway through the first half and goalkeeper Senne Lammens made a crucial one-on-one stop from Morgan Gibbs-White. United recycled play and Casemiro narrowly missed.<\/p>\n
Forest levelled after half-time when center back Morato headed in Elliot Anderson\u2019s cross. United regained the lead moments later through Matheus Cunha, the finish coming from the loose ball after Mbeumo\u2019s shot was blocked. A VAR review followed and the referee instructed a pitch-side check. Referee announcement: \u201cAfter review, the decision of goal stands because the handball offence is accidental, therefore the final decision is goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael Carrick\u2019s side extended the lead when Mbeumo netted his first goal since early February, arriving from a Bruno Fernandes assist. Fernandes had drifted to the right and delivered the cross for the finish. Forest reduced the deficit immediately when Gibbs-White converted a first-time finish from another Anderson delivery, and the visitors pushed for an equalizer. Late in the game Diogo Dalot hit the post and Joshua Zirkzee forced an outstanding save from Matz Sels; either would have produced the record-breaking assist for Fernandes.<\/p>\n
Elliot Anderson continued an outstanding individual year and has played himself into a possible starting berth for England at the World Cup. Anderson is also a reported target for Manchester City and could exceed $100 million in the transfer market.<\/p>\n
Luke Shaw deserves mention for a remarkable return to fitness. He has started all 37 Premier League games this season, likely to reach 38 next weekend, after only 16 league starts across the previous two campaigns. He was overlooked for Thomas Tuchel\u2019s most recent squad in March and it is not known whether his name features on the undisclosed preliminary list submitted to FIFA on Monday.<\/p>\n
Key ratings: Bruno Fernandes 8.3, Matheus Cunha 8.4, Bryan Mbeumo 8.4, Diogo Dalot 7.8, Harry Maguire 7.6, Lisandro Mart\u00ednez 7.3, Luke Shaw 7.2, Kobbie Mainoo 7.0, Senne Lammens 6.8, Casemiro 6.3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fernandes equals single-season assist record as United win 3-2 over Forest; VAR upheld goal. Next up<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13866,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1083,298,969],"tags":[1637,342,260],"class_list":["post-13867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-utd","category-nottingham-forest","category-premier-league","tag-assists","tag-bruno-fernandes","tag-bryan-mbeumo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}