Roy Keane has challenged Bruno Fernandes to step up and become a leader for Manchester United, with the former Old Trafford star not convinced the side's current captain is doing enough.
Keane knows what it's like to wear the Manchester United captaincy and as a result, he holds Fernandes and those before him to an incredibly high standard.
With United having dropped to 13th in the Premier League and breaking all the wrong records so far this season, Keane has called on talisman Fernandes to step up and be counted among the leaders ahead of a derby match against Manchester City.
“Man United have to turn up today and show some fight, some courage, the desire to defend a corner, the desire not to give away crazy free-kicks despite the fact that people are being closed off,” Keane told Sky Sports .
'We call Bruno [Fernandes] about his quality, but he needs to do more off the field, he needs to be a leader.
'He has to find people like [Marcus] Rashford to create something. We keep talking about characters at Manchester United and they don't show up, but we keep thinking they will next week. Time is running out for many of these players. We have to see it in a derby match today.”
Keane believes there can be no excuse for a lack of desire from United's players in one of the biggest games on the calendar.
Ruben Amorim's side have lost back-to-back games in the league – against Arsenal and Nottingham Forest – and their faint hopes of a top-four finish are fast fading heading into Christmas.
“You still have to find something, find a spark, find something from the dressing room,” Keane added.
'We can make excuses for this team all day long about off the field and recruitment, but you have to find something, create something in the dressing room, a spark… whatever the quality is in this team and there are question marks about a lot of it.
“But I get back to it and I say this every week: the reason you play football, whether it's against one man and his dog or against 50,000, you have to be proud of your achievements in some way.
“Whether that's how much you run, quality when you get the ball, you mention Man City and United in recent months, too easy to play against. People find it easy to play against you.'
Amorim is approaching his first transfer window as head coach of Manchester United and while he currently has a number of underperforming players to work with, he lacks the money to transform the group.
United are struggling to comply with PSR rules after posting losses of £300 million in the past three years.
After spending a further £200m on transfers last summer, they failed to take into account having to pay a further £21.4m to replace Erik ten Hag with Amorim.
That means that, as exclusively revealed by Mail Sport, United would consider a £40m bid for Marcus Rashford but would accept that there are unlikely to be any bidders for the England forward in the January transfer window.
Selling homegrown players counts as a 100 percent profit on PSR's balance sheet, and the spotlight has been on Rashford for some time, who has been with the club since he was seven.
It is believed the 27-year-old's asking price would have been as much as £100 million when he scored 30 goals in Ten Hag's first season at United.
But Rashford's loss of form and the contract he signed last year worth a prohibitive £325,000-a-week has seen his value more than halved.
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