Bruno Fernandes plays centre back as Man Utd lose 3-1 against Brighton | OneFootball

Bruno Fernandes appeared to play at centre back during Manchester United's 3-1 defeat to Brighton at Old Trafford on Saturday. United's poor start to the campaign continued as they were beaten by Roberto De Zerbi's impressive side which has put some more pressure on Ten Hag's reign at the club.

United fell behind after 20 minutes when former Red Devil, Danny Welbeck, opened the scoring with a lovely finish from inside the penalty area. United thought they had equalised shortly afterwards when Rasmus Højlund thought he had scored his first goal for the club when he pounced on Marcus Rashford's pullback. But VAR adjudged the ball to have crossed the goal line for a goal kick before Rashford's cross.

That was about as good as it got for the home side. Less than 10 minutes into the second half, Brighton doubled their lead when Pascal Gross got his traditional strike against United. Things started to turn sour when Ten Hag decided to replace Højlund for Anthony Martial in the 64th minute. It led to boos from the home supporters. And many of those supporters were leaving the Theatre of Dreams when Joao Pedro made it 3-0 converting Tariq Lamptey's cross. United did pull a goal back two minutes later from Hannibal Mejbri but it was merely a consolation.

By the end of the match, United were a bit of a mess. And it finished with captain Bruno Fernandes appearing to play centre back as the home side looked for a way back into the match. Whatever Ten Hag was attempting didn't work as the home side didn't really trouble Brighton and fell to a 3-1 defeat. But the experiment to play Bruno in defence made ripples across social media with plenty of angry United fans after seeing it.

The Portuguese star did get caught out in one moment as the pacy Ansu Fati, who is on loan from Barcelona, raced past him and saw his sidefooted effort well saved by Andre Onana.

United now have just six points from their opening five matches. They opened their season with an unconvincing win at home to Wolves where the visitors were denied a penalty that should have been awarded. They were then beaten by Tottenham in their second game, with the north London side winning 2-0. In their third match, they found themselves 2-0 down at home to Nottingham Forest inside five minutes but rallied to win 3-2 thanks to Forest going down to 10 men. But they've now suffered back-to-back defeats. They were beaten by Arsenal 3-1 before the international break with the Gunners scoring two late goals through Declan Rice and Gabriel Jesus. And now they've suffered their worst moment of the campaign, a 3-1 loss at home to Brighton.