While Manchester United’s Premier League victory against Sheffield United saw Bruno Fernandes claim the biggest headlines – the Portuguese’s brace making it seven goals for him in five appearances in April – it was also a noteworthy night for Harry Maguire.
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The season will consist of 33 weekends, four midweek rounds of matches and one Bank Holiday matchweek.
The Premier League has confirmed that arrangements will be made to ease the congested schedule around Christmas and New Year, with no club playing within 60 hours of another match.
However, the mid-season break, introduced in 2019/20, has been scrapped to allow for a later league start date.
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Today’s graduates – including Tom Heaton, Jonny Evans, Marcus Rashford, Scott McTominay, Alejandro Garnacho, Kobbie Mainoo, Willy Kambwala and Omari Forson – are adding to a rich heritage which has been at the heart of the club’s identity since Tom Manley became the first Academy player to play for Manchester United in 1931.
Duncan Edwards, Bill Foulkes, Bobby Charlton, Nobby Stiles, George Best, Norman Whiteside, Mark Hughes, Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville, David Beckham, Paul Scholes and Darren Fletcher are among the graduates who went on to achieve greatness with Manchester United, while others forged successful careers across the football pyramid.
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For this is the first time Bruno has found the net in five successive games in all competitions for the club.
The midfielder has twice managed a run of four consecutive outings with a goal, first in 2020, starting with that dramatic post-final whistle penalty at Brighton & Hove Albion.
Around a month later, he did the same, with a brace at Everton kicking off that particular run.
Our no.8 now has seven goals in his last five matches for the Reds, as he hits top form in the business end of the season.
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GRADUATE DEBUTS AND BESTS
While every debut is different, and each one unique to the individual making the prestigious honour of representing Manchester United for the first time, it’s interesting to look back and assess how our Academy graduates’ debuts have typically panned out.
Wheatley became the 103rd of our 250 Academy debutants to have made their first Reds appearance as a substitute, and it’s the 138th win that the Reds have taken from those 250 debuts. The mean age of an Academy graduate making their Reds debut is under 19, and the data reveals that each graduate makes, on average, 78 appearances for the club.
Some 117 debuts have come at Old Trafford, with Wheatley’s maiden outing for the Reds the 35th out of the 250 to have been made in Premier League competition – a further 105 came in the old Division One.
Sir Bobby Charlton is the highest-scoring graduate, with 249 goals, and was for several years the record appearance maker with 758, until being overtaken by Ryan Giggs, incredibly, with his appearance in the 2008 Champions League final the game to see him leapfrog the fellow European Cup winner. Giggs’s record stands at 963 appearances, and he also holds the honour of most trophies won by an Academy graduate, with 35.
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