Kevin De Bruyne has shared his admiration for Manchester United midfielder Bruno Fernandes.
The Belgian ended his previous Premier League campaign with more assists (16) than any other player in the division.
Despite that, the 32-year-old has shared some praise for another midfielder in the top flight who is never too far away from making an assist for his side.
De Bruyne praises Fernandes
In a recent video on the Sky Sports Premier League YouTube channel, De Bruyne had this to say about Fernandes after ranking him above Arsenal’s Martin Odegaard and Tottenham Hotspur’s James Maddison in terms of creativity on the pitch.
He said: “I think he’s a creative machine, just in general. Being creative has a lot of different things around it in just creating chances but also sometimes you can give somebody a ball and he shoots from 30 meters so it’s always different.
“But he’s always there, he takes a lot of risks so I like it and he’s been doing really well.”
United signed the Portuguese international back in the 2020 January transfer window for an initial fee of £47m.
Since then, the midfielder has gone on to make 187 appearances for the Red Devils across all competitions prior to their Premier League match against Nottingham Forest this weekend.
During his time with City’s rivals, Fernandes has scored 64 goals and delivered 54 assists, which shows the impact he’s had on the team in terms of providing goal contributions.
Looking back over the previous Premier League campaign, even though Fernandes racked up more shot-creating actions than De Bruyne (219 vs 176), the City star ended the season with a higher rate of shot-creating actions per 90 minutes than the 28-year-old (6.55 vs 5.94).
While it’s easy to see why the Belgian has been impressed with what the United midfielder has done, it’s clear that the five-time Premier League winner is the top creative midfielder in England.