Reuters
[Source: Reuters]
Manchester United climbed to sixth in the Premier League on Monday as captain Bruno Fernandes scored twice to help them claim a comfortable 4-1 victory at bottom club Wolverhampton Wanderers whose calamitous season gets bleaker by the week.
Dispirited Wolves fans spent most of the first half chanting in protest at the club’s Chinese owners Fosun and their mood worsened when Fernandes gave United a 25th-minute lead.
To their credit Wolves showed some enterprise and they were cheered off at halftime after Haiti international Jean-Ricner Bellegarde fired home an equaliser in stoppage time.
Bryan Mbeumo restored United’s lead with a tap-in after 52 minutes and Mason Mount’s composed finish made it 3-1 just past the hour mark. Fernandes completed the job for United with a penalty after VAR spotted a handball.
When nine minutes of stoppage time were announced the Wolves fans still inside Molineux booed and sang ‘blow the whistle’.
Ruben Amorim’s United have 25 points from 15 games while Wolves’s club-record eighth successive league defeat, and 13th of the season, left them marooned on two points and in danger of setting some unwanted Premier League history.
Their tally of points is the joint-lowest after 15 games in the history of England’s top four tiers and they are without a league win since April, losing 16 and drawing three since.
Wolves are now 13 points from the safety zone and the talk is not if they will be able to mount an escape bid but whether they can surpass the lowest-ever Premier League points haul of Derby County who managed only 11 in 2007-08.
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