Michael Carrick has been told not dropping Bruno Fernandes would have shown “I’m not finished” at Manchester United, as the club lost heavily to Bournemouth.

Carrick’s United side lost the third out of their last four games as the Cherries put three goals past them unanswered in the Premier League. It looks like it might have been the final chapter of the manager’s career at Old Trafford.

Carrick made the huge decision prior to the game to drop Bruno Fernandes, with the Portuguese not getting on the field for a minute.

It came after the United captain questioned his manager’s tactics after the club lost heavily to Como in the Champions League in the week.

Carrick stated dropping Fernandes was a purely footballing decision, though evidently one which didn’t go too well.

In response, former Premier League manager Alan Pardew has stated dropping the captain was the wrong call.

He told talkSPORT: “I’m thinking I would have played him, personally. There is this other side of the football coin where you go, you don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.

“You could still be strong by playing him. You say, ‘well, yes, I heard what he said. In my opinion, he’s wrong and I’m still not finished.’

“There might be some discipline coming his way on the back of a win, if you know what I mean.

“So you could turn it around a little bit and still win as the manager, but I don’t know what’s gone on on the training ground.

“Has Fernandes disrespected Michael on the bus, on the training ground from that evening to this game? Was there an incident? Was he sort of going, ‘the manager isn’t good enough’ in the background and the staff have told him?

“All those things I’m not privy to, and unless I was, I can’t make that decision. I can only give you the foresight of what happens.”

Bigger Bruno Fernandes issue now

Pardew feels that after being dropped, there’s now a bigger issue with Fernandes at United.

He explained: “I can think of examples. Joey Barton, when I first went to Newcastle, my first day, he said to me, ‘you’re not good enough to be manager here,’ but I played him in the game that came up next against Liverpool and we won.

“Then we went on from there and we were fine. We worked together, he didn’t need to apologise. Joey isn’t the type to apologise.

“So that’s an example where I could have just left Joey out. He’s not with me, I’ll leave him out. So you can use it, but you have to understand where you were.

“I watched Joey that week in training. He was on it, he was up for it. I could see that. So I knew that actually his playing side of it, he was going to give us something.

“And I think that the whole Fernandes one now is in leaving him out and losing the game now becomes even more of an issue.”

The issue might not be so big if Carrick is not in the dugout for the next game, though, which is largely suggested to be the case.