Manchester United manager Michael Carrick is confident that Bruno Fernandes won’t be going anywhere, insisting that the mutual affection between player and club is clear for all to see.The same could not be said 12 months ago. After a disappointing 15th-place finish and Europa League final heartache, United gave serious consideration to offloading their talismanic playmaker—according to Fernandes. Ruben Amorim fought to keep his compatriot, who rewarded that trust with one of the standout statistical seasons in Premier League history (even if Amorim was fired midway through it).Much like his predecessor, Carrick is hell-bent on keeping Fernandes as he heads towards the final year of his Manchester United contract.When quizzed on whether his captain would still be at the club for the start of the 2026–27 season, Carrick shot back: “I’ve got no reason to think otherwise.“We’ve loved what he’s done, and he loves being here. I think you can see that. He’s such an influence for us. He’s been the captain and led by example in different ways. He wants to stay on every single game because he’s enjoying his football, which is fantastic.”Fernandes’s Contract Situation Raises QuestionsBruno Fernandes is in a league of his own. pic.twitter.com/tUqJP3CrML— Sports Illustrated FC (@SI_FootballClub) May 24, 2026Fernandes turns 32 in September and is well aware of how loudly a player’s biological clock ticks in Premier League boardrooms. “In England,” he fretted earlier this season, “when a player starts to approach 30, they start to think they need to remodel. It’s like the furniture.”Talks over a new deal are expected to occur over the coming weeks, BBC Sport report. Manchester United are thought to have the option of unilaterally extending Fernandes’s existing contract for an extra year but, heading towards the World Cup, United’s best player is set to be a free agent by the end of next season.Following the exit of Casemiro, Fernandes already stands alone as Manchester United’s top earner, with his salary inflated to somewhere in the region of $470,000 per week following the club’s return to Champions League competition. That singles the experienced midfielder out as one of the Premier League’s best paid players, so any potential increase would be a major investment.Will Man Utd Make the Same Mistakes As Liverpool?Virgil van Dijk (left) knows a thing or two about getting a lucrative new deal at a late stage of his career. | Visionhaus/Getty ImagesThe question for United is not, “Is Bruno Fernandes currently worthy of a contract extension?” That’s obvious. Instead, if the club want to bother maintaining the façade of being a serious operation, they need to ask themselves, “Will Fernandes be worth the millions he earns by the end of whatever new deal he is offered?” As United’s fiercest neighbors have discovered at some cost, those are two very different questions.Both Virgil van Dijk and Mohamed Salah were regularly putting in performances worthy of the eye-watering pay packets which Liverpool eventually gave in to at the time those deals were signed last April. However, once the mist of title-winning jubilation had cleared, it soon became apparent that they may have overplayed their hand with two-year deals.Liverpool were fortunate that Arne Slot aggravated Salah so much the Egyptian forward agreed to terminate his contract one year early. Van Dijk has shown no signs of giving up his status as the best-paid center back on the planet despite performing at a level far below that lofty standard.As Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his sharpened scythe have shown throughout his spell as co-owner, this austere iteration of United are not in the business of losing money. If non-playing staff are only allowed fruit in the club canteen, it would seem unwise to waste all those savings on a week (at most) of a new three-year deal for a 31-year-old.The most sensible course of action would surely be to trigger the one-year extension in Fernandes’s contract and spend the next 12 months trying to find his replacement while also developing a playing style which isn’t entirely dependent upon one individual.READ THE LATEST TRANSFER NEWS AND RUMORS FROM WORLD SOCCERAdd us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow