BRUNO FERNANDES has heap praise on manager Erik ten Hag for laying down the law at the club.
The Dutch manager has demanded good behaviour from the players and the result has seen United challenge towards the top of the table.
Fernandes has revealed that the players were unsure how Ten Hag would be with the players when he was first appointed as boss last summer.
The Portuguese midfielder also admitted that the manager would not be afraid to “pull apart” big players in the squad such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho.
He told Rio Ferdinand on his podcast Between The Lines: “He first arrived and we went on tour and the training sessions we had, he demands: ‘you do it or you’re out. You don’t play.’
“Everyone was a little bit like in the beginning: ‘will he do that or not? If a big player doesn’t do what he wants will he pull him apart or not?’
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“And he did that many times, he did it with Cristiano, with Jadon, with Marcus.”
His methods have already been tested as he had to deal with Ronaldo’s antics in the first part of the season.
After the attacker refused to come on as a substitute against Tottenham and did an interview with Piers Morgan in which he criticised United.
This led to ten Hag and the club exiling him from the team and eventually letting him leave the club.
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The result of this has seen the United side perform better on the pitch without distraction.
Ten Hag has also put a lot of work into helping Sancho get back to his best by sending him on a training course in Holland separate from the team.
This is paying dividends as the winger is now back in the squad and performing well for the team.
But Fernandes was most impressed with how ten Hag dealt with inform star Rashford after he overslept and missed a team meeting ahead of the New Year’s Eve clash with Wolves.
Despite being a regular goalscorer, ten Hag dropped him from the starting line-up, and it proved to motivate Rashford even more as he came on as a sub and scored a vital goal.
Fernandes believes that it would have been easy for ten Hag to forgive the error and insisted that Rashford accepted the decision.
He said: “Marcus was probably in the best form against Wolves, he did something wrong and the manager pulled him out.
“In the first moment, we thought ‘he’s our main man, we need him’ but in the second I was sitting with David [De Gea] and I said ‘it has to be like this’ because if not that the younger ones will think ‘if he does nothing to them he’ll do nothing to me too’.
“He demanded from Rashy you have to be consistent in everything, not only in your games, in your goals, and your performance but off the pitch also.
“Marcus in the beginning he was hungry because he wanted to play but he didn’t do anything wrong, he accepted, came on, scored, we win and at the end him and the coach are laughing.
“Sometimes you have to make some rules in your house.
“Otherwise, they will go over you and they will be the owners of the house.”
The approach from the former Ajax boss is working with the players as they are still competing on four fronts this season.
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United face Barcelona in the Europa League tonight in the second leg of the play off round ahead of a Carabao Cup final against Newcastle on Sunday.
The club is also still in the FA Cup and have a favourable draw against Premier League strugglers West Ham at Old Trafford on March 1.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
