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Bruno Fernandes has praised Harry Maguire’s mindset after the Manchester United captain recovered from his midweek horror show to inspire his team to victory in Newcastle. The central defender was sent off by England against Denmark and there were doubts as to whether he should start the game at St James’ Park.
However, Maguire responded to their criticism and appeared with a good header to equalize the Red Devils, after Luke Shaw’s own goal.
Fernandes then saw his penalty saved by Karl Darlow, but did so with five minutes remaining with a good shot off the post.
Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Marcus Rashford then added sparkle to the scoreboard with two more strikes in injury time.
The Portuguese was impressed with the mentality of his team and praised Maguire, after a difficult few months.
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Before tonight’s win, Fernandes had scored all 10 Manchester United penalties.
However, it was denied here by Darlow, who was in good shape all night despite the score, after changing his usual stutter.
Since then, Fernandes has justified his decision to change his approach to the penalty shot, saying: “I change a few times already. Today it doesn’t work.
“I need to do what is best for the game, today was not the right choice but it doesn’t matter, missing the penalty I have to keep improving in the next games.”
United are now entering a tough streak of matches that will see them face Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea, RB Leipzig and Arsenal in the next two weeks.
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Maguire was wary of getting carried away and suggesting that United may not have turned the corner yet.
He told Sky Sports: “I would not say we have responded to them [the critics]. It’s funny, three games in the season and it looks like a big crisis. He won two, he lost two. There is a long way to go, we have to improve.
“When you play for this club and they beat you at home, we ask questions. We worked hard in training, it’s a great group and we knew we had to recover. I felt like it would have been very hard if we went out with us. just one point. A deserved victory.
“It was important. In every Premier League game we want to be at the top. Some games we will not be at our best, but we have to do the basics well and in the games we lost we did not do the basics well.
“We knew we needed to score three points and we did it. We have a difficult streak ahead.
“We are still a young team, but we will not use it as an excuse. It was disappointing to start as we did, but tonight it was a great performance when we needed it.”
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