Fernandes’s late strike gives Manchester United timely win at Fulham

And yet, through all the pain and the punishment, the aimless days and the listless nights, the indignities and the disgraces, there was always Bruno. Bruno: with his outrageous talent and his talent for outrage. Bruno: in all his felicities and infelicities. Bruno: the lightning rod of rage and the heart of dysfunction, the storm and the man who can calm the storm. And, admittedly, the man who can occasionally jog around for 90 minutes pretending the storm is none of his business.

Bruno was always there, even if sometimes it didn’t feel like it made much of a difference, even if there were people who didn’t want him to be. This was a game of few clear chances – in fact, no clear chances – that the home side probably shaded on balance. Fulham had more shots, more of the creativity in the final third, won more of the big challenges. But through it all there was always Bruno Fernandes: the game’s unreliable narrator, its Rosebud, the man capable of taking a long boring trip back up the M6 and turning it into a thrashing festival of song.

Fernandes didn’t win this game on his own, but it felt fitting that he should provide its defining touch. For all his faults, he has long been the restless festering energy at the heart of this wretched football club: not something perfect, but something real. His curling shot in the 91st minute settled a game that frankly had every right to remain goalless.

As for Fulham, this was a game they would probably have won with a decent striker. Rodrigo Muniz made his first league start of the season here but went off injured and in tears, and so the great gaping hole where Aleksandar Mitrovic once stood remains unfilled. Harry Wilson and João Palhinha had good chances, Willian shuffled and scuttled around, Alex Iwobi had a storming game in midfield, but ultimately it came down to killer instinct. Fulham still don’t have it. United, for all the things they have forgotten, still occasionally remember theirs.

And there was an argument that they should have been ahead long before Fernandes’s late flourish. An early goal for Scott McTominay was ruled out for offside against Harry Maguire, who lunged at the ball without making contact. Was Maguire affecting play? Is Maguire ever really affecting play? After several minutes of existential contemplation, John Brooks chalked off the goal and the tight, tentative tone of the game was set.

It was United doing most of the defending. Wilson was having a superb game on the right flank. Palhinha, surely a £100 m player by now, was the best midfielder on the pitch by an almost embarrassingly wide margin. Meanwhile Rasmus Højland and Tim Ream were having a duel straight out of the Marvel Comic Universe. Diogo Dalot made a crucial stretching clearance. André Onana made one excellent save from Wilson and a more routine save from Palhinha. Antony just sort of existed.

But as the game reached its sharp end, Fulham seemed to run out of ideas. Facundo Pellistri came on for Antony and immediately injected a little direct running into that right flank. And it was the legs of Pellistri that created the goal, chasing down Antonee Robinson and then Palhinha, who rushed his clearance straight to Fernandes. Fernandes got the ball back from Pellistri, took a look, and found the bottom corner via a slight deflection. It doesn’t make everything better again. It doesn’t make United good. But when the wider war is being calamitously lost, you have to take your little victories when you can.