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Roy Keane has reignited his ongoing verbal battle with Bruno Fernandes by sharing a sharply worded post online. The Manchester United icon appeared to be directly responding to the Portuguese midfielder’s recent accusation that he had been dishonest in his evaluation of Fernandes’ performances.

Keane retaliates online

The long-simmering tension between Manchester United’s former captain and its current skipper has taken another turn. After Fernandes questioned Keane’s integrity in public, the Irishman posted a cryptic image of a donkey on his Instagram story. The image carried a caption that read: “Too much attention makes a donkey think he’s a lion.”

The timing of Keane’s post—just hours after Fernandes’ remarks surfaced—strongly implied a direct response to the midfielder. Keane, who has often criticised Fernandes for his leadership and body language, seemed to elevate the clash from football analysis to a personal disagreement over truthfulness and character.

Fernandes accuses Keane of ‘lying’

The public spat intensified when Fernandes appeared on the Diary of a CEO podcast to discuss Keane’s comments on The Overlap. The United playmaker alleged that Keane had misrepresented his post-match comments following a fixture against Nottingham Forest, where the former midfielder-turned-pundit accused him of focusing more on his assist tally than team results. Fernandes insisted that Keane’s version of events was false, claiming he never said what was attributed to him.

Speaking to host Steven Bartlett, Fernandes said: “I’ve always said I don’t mind criticism. I always take criticism from everyone and I never reply to anything. People have an opinion, they think it’s good, bad or whatever. What I don’t like is when people lie about things.”

He continued: “In this case with Roy Keane, what he said is a lie because maybe he saw some other interview or he can’t say that I said something I didn’t say. I accept his criticism, whether he likes me as a player or not, or as a person or not. But what I don’t like is when he puts words in my mouth that I never said.”

The assist record debate

At the centre of their disagreement lies Fernandes’ record-breaking campaign, in which he surpassed Thierry Henry and Kevin De Bruyne to set a new Premier League record of 21 assists in a single season. Keane had previously admitted he was “furious” with how the team celebrated Fernandes equalling the record in the final weeks of the campaign, arguing that the focus had become overly individualistic.

Keane had originally remarked: “After the game, he got interviewed, and the captain of Manchester United said: ‘Yeah, a few times I probably should have shot, but I made them passes.’ Wow. How can a footballer’s mindset be going into a match thinking about some individual record?”

Fernandes later clarified that his actual comment was the opposite—that he should have passed more—and that he even approached former manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer for Keane’s contact details in an attempt to resolve the misunderstanding privately.

Carrick backs his captain

Despite the harsh words from the Sky Sports studio, Fernandes continues to enjoy the full support of his manager, Michael Carrick. The United boss, who recently extended his contract at Old Trafford, remains steadfast in his belief that Fernandes is the right leader to guide the team back to Champions League contention.

Addressing the controversy, Carrick said: “He’s such an influence for us and he’s been the captain, leading by example in different ways. I’ve got no reason to think otherwise. We’ve loved what he’s done and he loves being here, and I think you can see that.”