Bruno Fernandes has accused Roy Keane of telling a “lie” about his pursuit of the Premier League assists record. Manchester United’s captain secured the outright record for assists in a season by taking his tally to 21 in Sunday’s 3-0 win at Brighton.
The 31-year-old had equalled the previous record, shared by Thierry Henry and Kevin De Bruyne, a week earlier during United’s 3-2 victory over Nottingham Forest. Keane suggested Fernandes was prioritising individual glory over the team’s interests, describing him as being at the centre of a “circus act”.
Speaking on The Overlap podcast, Keane said: “After the [Forest] game he got interviewed and he said, the captain of Manchester United said: ‘A few times, I probably should have shot but I made them passes.’ Wow. How can your mindset of a footballer be going into a match to be about an individual record? He won’t be winning trophies, not with that mindset of the team.”
Fernandes’s actual post-match remarks were: “There were probably moments today when I should have passed instead of shot. I’m very happy for the assist, but more than that, I’m happy for the win and to finish the season on a high.”
Fernandes said Keane, a former United captain, had put untrue “words in my mouth”. He told The Diary of a CEO podcast: “Like I’ve always said, I don’t mind criticism. I’ve always taken criticism from everyone and anyone and I never reply to anything or whatsoever.
“People have an opinion; they think it’s good, bad, whatever. What I don’t like is when people lie about things and [in] this case that you said about Roy Keane basically what he said is a lie because … either he saw some other interview or he can’t say that I said one thing that I’ve just not said and luckily for me everything is on record.
“I accept his criticism, I accept that he might like me as a player or not, like me as a person or not. But what I don’t like is that he puts words in my mouth that have not been said.”
Keane then appeared to stoke the feud by posting on Instagram: “Too much attention makes a donkey think he’s a lion.”
Fernandes said he had contacted the former United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjær to ask for Keane’s phone number so he could address the issue. “I think I’ve always showed a lot of respect for Roy Keane and for everything he’s done for the club and for everything he’s always said,” Fernandes said. “What I don’t like is that people make their own words on what I say and it’s not true.”