The likes of Roy Keane and Gary Neville have regularly slammed Fernandes' leadership qualities.
"I think he's so important for this team," he said. "And you can see it by the numbers, and you can see from these last games, he's always the guy that scores.
"It's not the most important thing, it's not the only thing, but he's always there.
"When you play for this team, you have to be prepared for the critics and I understand that former players had a lot of success here and the standards for them were so high that they see the things like that sometimes as black and white.
"In life sometimes it's not just black and white, there is some other colours and you have to understand the context.
"Again, he's always there, trying his best, so I'm really proud to coach a player like him."