Bruno: We had great fighting spirit

Fernandes, leading the team for the first time competitively since being appointed our new skipper, admitted that United weren’t at our best during the 1-0 victory over Wolves on Monday evening.

Despite that, Bruno and co came off the pitch with all three points after Raphael Varane’s 76th-minute decider.

“It was important to start with a win,” the midfielder told Sky Sports, shortly after full-time.

“We wanted to start with three points. We had a great fighting spirit. It wasn’t the best game from our side, but the most important thing was winning the game and we did that.

“[For the goal] it’s the kind of movement we trained, we don’t train Rapha to be in the box, but he was there," he added.

“Azza [Aaron Wan-Bissaka] made a great movement, I had to find him in behind the defenders and he did a great cross to Rapha, and Rapha was there to put it in and I’m really happy for that.”

Wolves made life difficult for United throughout, and it was clear to see that Fernandes and co had to work hard for our eventual rewards on the evening.

Bruno admits that it was difficult to plan for our first opponents of the season, who changed their boss last week, with Gary O’Neil coming in to replace the departed Julen Lopetegui in the dugout.

“They are a good team. We didn’t know what to expect from their side because they had a change of manager, it was about adapting on the pitch and understanding what we had to do,” he continued, in his post-match interview with Sky Sports.

“The manager [Erik] gave us the options on the way to press, I think we did well. We should have been a little bit more aggressive sometimes and we could have gone to the goal in situations. 

“On the ball, we were a little bit rushed sometimes, we could have kept a little bit more of the ball and had better timing on the counters because we are really dangerous at doing that. It wasn’t the perfect game, but we won.”

Fernandes was honest in his post-match media duties, and after acknowledging that it wasn’t a perfect performance, he underlined the standards that he and his team-mates have for playing here at Old Trafford, while joining MUTV pitchside.

The Reds are now 19 Premier League games unbeaten in M16, dating back to our opening game of last season, and Bruno insists that our supporters have played a role in that.

“Coming here to play against Manchester United is not nice, it's not nice,” our no.8 told Mark Sullivan and Wes Brown.

“And we don't want to be the nice ones. We have to be the toughest ones. It has to be tough to play here because the fans here, they create a difficult situation for the teams that come from outside. And us on the pitch, we have to do the same. 

“We have to give that passion. We have to put everything on the pitch. And after it's about the qualities we have on ourselves, we can make a difference. We can score goals, we can create and we can defend.”