Manchester United star Bruno Fernandes has embarrassed his own teammate Luke Shaw with his latest appearance stat for the club.
According to Samuel Luckhurst of the Manchester Evening News, the Portugal international, who starts for the Red Devils again today in their Premier League clash away to West Ham, is now just 29 games behind Shaw in terms of total appearances for the club despite being at Old Trafford for a fraction of the time.
See below for the damning stat from Luckhurst, who points out that Shaw joined United ten years ago, while Fernandes has only been here for just over four years…
By playing today, Bruno Fernandes (#mufc debut February 2020) will be 29 United appearances behind Luke Shaw (debut September 2014).
— Samuel Luckhurst (@samuelluckhurst) October 27, 2024
While one has to sympathise with Shaw and his repeated injury problems, it’s still pretty bad to have a record like this after so long, with United arguably keeping too much faith in a player who just hasn’t shown the right kind of availability.
Fernandes, by contrast, is Mr Reliable for the Red Devils, starting week in, week out for the team and always giving it his best, even if he’s not quite found his usual world class form so far this season.
Bruno Fernandes stat surely shows it’s time to replace Luke Shaw?
Shaw is a fine player when he is fit and available, but United surely need to think hard about replacing him soon or they’re just going to find they keep carrying an unreliable player.
Ben Chilwell has been linked with United and could be a decent replacement, though he’s another player who, despite being very useful when he’s available, has also had injury struggles of his own.
Overall, though, United will surely look back and feel they just should’ve been more ruthless with Shaw a lot earlier, as being patient with him just hasn’t really paid off at any point.