Darren Fletcher has confirmed Manchester United captain Bruno Fernandes is fit to face Burnley on Wednesday night and has described his temporary appointment as a coach as a considerable honour.<\/p>\n
Fletcher said: “It is an amazing honour to lead a Manchester United team especially as it was not in my wildest dreams that would be something which could potentially happen.” He acknowledged the awkwardness of the circumstances: “To lead out the team is an amazing honour and something I am really proud to do but not in the circumstances I expected it to, so that is something which doesn\u2019t sit quite easy with me.” He added: “But I\u2019ve just got to think I have a job to do and I just have to lead the team tomorrow [against Burnley] and think of the great honour and pride in doing that.”<\/p>\n
Fletcher will be assisted by Travis Binnion, U21 assistant Alan Wright and former teammate Jonny Evans. He will be in charge for at least the Burnley match while United plan to have an interim manager in place until the end of the season, with a permanent hire expected in the summer.<\/p>\n
BBC Sport reports Fletcher is among three club legends with whom “preliminary talks” have been held about taking the interim role until the end of the season. Former boss Ole Gunnar Solskj\u00e6r and Michael Carrick, who had three games as a caretaker in 2021, are the other two named.<\/p>\n
Pressed on whether he would stay beyond one game, Fletcher remained focused on preparation. “Focus on this game and then speak after the game,” he said. “It all happened very quickly on Monday with a game to prepare and a quick turnaround, training session to organise, speak to the players. The focus is on the Burnley game as I think that we give the Burnley match the respect and focus it deserves to prepare the team in such a short space of time.”<\/p>\n
On player availability he confirmed: “Mason [Mount] and Bruno were pushing to play against Leeds and the decision was that they weren\u2019t quite ready. They have trained and they should be back in the squad.” He added: “They are on managed minutes and restricted minutes because they have only just returned to training so that is good news, especially because they are players who have been in good form. Mason Mount\u2019s form has been fantastic and Bruno Fernandes … you don\u2019t have to speak about him.”<\/p>\n
Fernandes had been ruled out of Amorim\u2019s final three games with a rare injury absence; United scored three times in those three fixtures compared with 10 in the previous three when he played. Fletcher said his immediate concentration is on the Burnley fixture and said discussions about a longer-term role would follow after the match. “Honestly it is not what I have thought about. Focusing on Burnley, that discussion is for after the game. It has all happened so quickly so all my concentration is on Burnley. I know it is a generic answer but it is what it is.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fletcher confirms Bruno Fernandes fit for Burnley and calls interim charge ‘an amazing honour’ today<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5789,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[795,179,969],"tags":[1021,342,1087],"class_list":["post-5790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-burnley","category-manchester-united","category-premier-league","tag-amorim","tag-bruno-fernandes","tag-coaching-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5790","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=5790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}