Bruno Fernandes was forced off at half-time in Manchester United\u2019s defeat to Aston Villa, taken out of the contest and replaced by Lisandro Mart\u00ednez. The Portugal international, the club captain and a key contributor this season, did not return for the second half and now faces a period on the sidelines.<\/p>\n
United manager Ruben Amorim described the problem as a \u201csoft tissue\u201d injury after the game but declined to put a timeframe on Fernandes\u2019s recovery. \u201cBruno, we will see. I don\u2019t know. I think it is soft tissue; he is going to lose some games. I don\u2019t know for sure, so let\u2019s see,\u201d Amorim said. On whether the absence would last for weeks he added, \u201cI don\u2019t know [if Fernandes will be missing for weeks]. I don\u2019t want to talk about it. You never control these things. It is a guy who is always fit, so he can recover quite well, but I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amorim also suggested the midfielder would be out \u201cfor a while.\u201d The 31-year-old\u2019s future at the club was already under scrutiny following a recent surprise interview, and his loss will be felt in the middle of the park while he is unavailable.<\/p>\n
United enter a congested period of fixtures. They begin with the visit from Newcastle United on Boxing Day, then face Wolverhampton Wanderers at home, Leeds United away, Burnley away and Brighton & Hove Albion at home in the FA Cup third round. Those matches are followed by meetings with Manchester City at home and Arsenal away.<\/p>\n
The squad is already dealing with a number of absences. Kobbie Mainoo missed the Villa game through injury and will be absent against Newcastle United on Boxing Day. Casemiro will return from a one-match suspension for that game. Bryan Mbeumo, Noussair Mazraoui and Amad Diallo are on international duty at the Africa Cup of Nations. Matthijs de Ligt and Harry Maguire are notable defensive absentees.<\/p>\n
How many matches Fernandes will miss remains unknown. The club will monitor his recovery and provide updates as they become available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bruno Fernandes faces a spell out with a soft tissue issue after leaving at half-time vs Aston Villa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5304,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1083,969],"tags":[1211,342,939],"class_list":["post-5305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-utd","category-premier-league","tag-africa-cup-of-nations","tag-bruno-fernandes","tag-casemiro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5305","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=5305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}