The benching of club captain Bruno Fernandes (£11.7m) was probably Michael Carrick’s last roll of the dice as Manchester United’s head coach.
It failed spectacularly, as Marcus Tavernier (£6.3m) helped Bournemouth secure an easy 3-0 win.
Here are our Scout Notes from Old Trafford.
BRUNO STAYED UNUSED
Six FPL blanks from seven, combined with explosive post-Como comments, led to Carrick’s huge call. The head coach said it was a “pure football” decision to bench Fernandes, and he didn’t even turn to his Portuguese playmaker during the second half.
“You’re picking a team, a starting XI, you’ve got options to choose from so there’s always a difficult decision. We’ve got to make what we think is the right one for the team to try and get the performance we want.” – Michael Carrick
If Carrick remains in charge, will Fernandes get back into his lineup? Of course, all eyes are locked onto the first part of that question.
GOAL FOR TAVERNIER
The team hasn’t won in eight matches (all competitions) and are still without a Premier League clean sheet.
Boos got louder throughout the stadium, as players racked up error after error, a couple of which led to goals.
Before that, Bournemouth’s Rayan (£6.3m) broke the deadlock. The most frequent shooter to still be goalless after Gameweek 7, our ‘Goals Imminent’ table said he was due one, and that came when calmly volleying in a deep Justin Kluivert (£5.9m) free-kick.
An outing of four big chances means he’s now on nine overall – the third most – while sitting joint-third for attempts (26, below).
Fellow Brazilian Evanilson (£6.2m) also found the net when Lewis Cook‘s (£5.0m) long ball tempted Senne Lammens (£4.9m) to come sprinting out of his penalty area, allowing the striker to go around him and produce an uncharacteristically brilliant tight-angled finish. He’s scored in three successive matches.
In between came a goal from Gameweek 8’s most-bought player, Tavernier, whose 655,000 new owners were delighted when Leny Yoro‘s (£4.8m) 42nd-minute stumble allowed Adrien Truffert (£5.4m) to set up a simple tap-in.
By netting his only shot of the match, Tavernier is now on five for the season. Expect his price to keep rising ahead of the Cherries’ attractive fixture swing.
MBEUMO BLANK
Interestingly, Man United had almost twice as many attempts as their visitors (17 v 10), but lost 0-6 when it came to big chances.
341,000 bought Bryan Mbeumo (£7.9m) this week, and the Cameroonian put one shot on target shortly after Rayan’s opener. But not much else, finishing on 0.26 expected goals (xG).
As for Matheus Cunha (£7.9m), he had a couple of moments after being thrown on at half-time.
Defender Harry Maguire (£4.7m) received a yellow card, meaning zero points.
DEFCON
Meanwhile, Marco Rose’s side find themselves on consecutive clean sheets. Centre-backs James Hill (£5.5m) and Antonio Silva (£5.0m) further increased their tallies by securing defensive contribution (DefCon) points.
21 actions ensured Hill comfortably reached the threshold for the fifth time this season, whereas Silva is one of only two players to do it six times. He should be a key target for FPL managers.
Back to Rayan, the accumulation of 17 actions was by far his best of 2026/27. The other seven matches totalled 23, so treat this as an exception to the norm.
Nobody really owns Ryan Christie (£5.0m), but collecting 11 in just 21 minutes is quite an achievement.
CAMEO FOR KROUPI
A more notable cameo saw Eli Junior Kroupi (£7.3m) play his first minutes of the campaign.
The exciting 20-year-old scored 13 times in 2025/26, despite just 21 starts, boasting a great minutes-per-goal rate (134).
His return adds competition to Bournemouth’s versatile front four and, as he’s not registered for the Europa League group stage, this could be a slight concern for Tavernier’s owners. Will he enable some rotation?
Also, Kroupi is another potential penalty-taking obstacle. Not that it’s holding Tavernier back right now!
