'I know him really well' - Fulham boss says Bruno Fernandes is suffering from 'Man United effect' after TikTok row

Fulham boss Marco Silva has responded to criticism over the club's TikTok clip posted midweek which suggested that Bruno Fernandes had feigned injury against the Cottagers.

Manchester United are understood to be unhappy with the social media clip which showed the club captain going down with an injury in the dying moments of last week's 2-1 defeat at Old Trafford. Fernandes was shown getting back to his feet moments later with the clip captioned, "so glad he's okay" along with a rolling eyes emoji, suggesting that Fulham were not convinced about the legitimacy of his injury claim.

United boss Erik Ten Hag has called the social media criticism "pathetic" whilst wanting Fulham to apologise for painting the Portuguese midfielder in a negative light. Now Silva has responded in a pre-match match press conference on Friday, saying that the noise around it is simply because of the scale of United.

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“I am not a big fan of social media but as you would expect I am aware of this," Silva said. "It was a reaction from Ten Hag. When a manager defends a football player I think it is a normal situation. With one of our players, I am going to defend them to the last.

"We all noticed that Ten Hag said he had not seen the post. He was speaking after a question from a journalist. I haven’t heard the question - I don’t know how the journalist put that question. For a manager in that moment, if you say to me that 10 minutes ago if any club said something about my player, I am going to defend my player even if I