And yet, through all the pain and the punishment, the aimless days and the listless nights, the indignities and the disgraces, there was always Bruno. Bruno: with his outrageous talent and his talent for outrage. Bruno: in all his felicities and infelicities. Bruno: the lightning rod of rage and the heart of dysfunction, the storm and the man who can calm the storm. And, admittedly, the man who can occasionally jog around for 90 minutes pretending the storm is none of his business.
Bruno was always there, even if sometimes it didn’t feel like it made much of a difference, even if there were people who didn’t want him to be. This was a game of few clear chances – in fact, no clear chances – that the home side probably shaded on balance. Fulham had more shots, more of the creativity in the final third, won more of the big challenges. But through it all there was always Bruno Fernandes: the game’s unreliable narrator, its Rosebud, the man capable of taking a long boring trip back up the M6 and turning it into a thrashing festival of song.
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