{"id":2559,"date":"2026-06-10T22:56:36","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T22:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=2559"},"modified":"2026-06-10T22:56:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T22:56:36","slug":"roy-keane-and-bruno-fernandes-clear-air-after-premier-league-assist-dispute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=2559","title":{"rendered":"Roy Keane and Bruno Fernandes clear air after Premier League assist dispute"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Roy Keane has cleared the air with <\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/manchester-united\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Manchester United<\/b><\/a><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">  captain Bruno Fernandes, with the pair having a &#8220;lovely chat&#8221; after he misquoted the Portuguese &#8211; which led to  Fernandes accusing him of lying.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Former Republic of Ireland midfielder Keane also implied Fernandes was prioritising individual accolades over the team&#8217;s success.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Fernandes broke the record for the most assists in a single Premier League season on the final day of the 2025-26 campaign, setting up his 21st goal against <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/brighton-and-hove-albion\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Brighton<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Speaking on The Overlap podcast after the penultimate round of fixtures in May, Keane questioned Fernandes&#8217; mindset and described him as being at the centre of a &#8220;circus act&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He claimed the Portugal midfielder had said &#8220;I probably should have shot but I made them passes&#8221; in an interview following the 3-2 win over <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/nottingham-forest\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Nottingham Forest<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Fernandes subsequently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/cn9ppv3lq4lo\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">accused Keane of telling a &#8220;lie&#8221;,<\/a> pointing out that his actual post-match comments were: &#8220;There were probably moments today when I should have passed instead of shot. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;m very happy for the assist, but more than that, I&#8217;m happy for the win and to finish the season on a high.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Fernandes said he was keen to meet the former <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/manchester-united\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Manchester United<\/a> captain to discuss the issue, with Keane revealing on Wednesday&#8217;s Stick to Football podcast that a &#8220;nice, mature conversation&#8221; had taken place.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There was a reaction after what we said on the podcast a few weeks ago and he reached out to me and wanted a chat &#8211; I called him and we had a lovely chat,&#8221; Keane said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was nice because when we do podcasts or games, sometimes you think you say something afterwards and you communicate something and it doesn&#8217;t come across properly, so people get upset and he said he wanted to talk to me. We had a nice, mature conversation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I like having boundaries with players. I don&#8217;t want to be speaking to players every few weeks or their agents, I don&#8217;t want to go down that road, but every now and then a player might reach out, so I think it was important I spoke to him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There has been lots going on and lots reported. He&#8217;s obviously a big player for United, I&#8217;m an ex-United player and I think the idea of this communicating and having a proper conversation, I really enjoyed it. Hopefully I think he did as well. Nice chat about a bit of everything and I felt better afterwards.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Roy Keane has cleared the air with Manchester United captain Bruno Fernandes, with the pair having a &#8220;lovely chat&#8221; after&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}