{"id":492273,"date":"2026-06-10T10:26:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T10:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/492273\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T10:26:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T10:26:07","slug":"roy-keane-and-bruno-fernandes-clear-air-after-premier-league-assist-dispute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/492273\/","title":{"rendered":"Roy Keane and Bruno Fernandes clear air after Premier League assist dispute"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Roy Keane has cleared the air with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/manchester-united\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Manchester United<\/a> 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.<\/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\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">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\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">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\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">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\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roy Keane has cleared the air with Manchester United captain Bruno Fernandes, with the pair having a &#8220;lovely&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-492273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}