Bruno Fernandes was named the Premier League Player Of The Season after a 2025/26 campaign in which the 31-year-old recorded 20 assists and helped Manchester United secure Champions League football.
It is the first time Fernandes has won the award and it arrived on the back of a season in which he scored eight goals in 37 Premier League appearances and directly contributed to 28 goals overall.
The figure that landed the prize was Fernandes’s 20 assists, an output that equalled the Premier League single-season record held jointly by Thierry Henry and Kevin De Bruyne. Fernandes reached the mark when he fed Bryan Mbeumo for a strike in a 3-2 win over Nottingham Forest that took him level with the record; across the campaign he created 132 chances, 43 more than Liverpool’s Dominik Szoboszlai in that category.
Beyond the raw numbers, Fernandes also collected a clutch of individual honours: he was voted the EA SPORTS Player of the Season for the first time, had been named EA SPORTS Player of the Month in March and was already the men’s Footballer of the Year as decided by the Football Writers’ Association — the first Manchester United player to win the FWA award since Wayne Rooney in 2009/10. He is the seventh player to receive the EA SPORTS Player of the Season award while representing Manchester United.
The result underlines the friction at the heart of this season’s awards: Fernandes beat a trio from title-winning Arsenal — David Raya, Gabriel and Declan Rice — while other high-profile names such as Erling Haaland and Antoine Semenyo missed out. Fernandes’s season was notable for chance creation and assists rather than sheer goal totals; he finished on eight Premier League goals, a contrast with some contenders whose campaigns were measured by larger goal hauls.
Asked after the Nottingham Forest game about the milestone, Fernandes said: "I'm very happy for the assist and for the win, and to finish the season on a high," and, reflecting on the chance to push the record further, he added: "I got to 20, let's see [if I can get to 21], we have one more game. It's the highest I've done in the Premier League so I am very happy with it." The immediate next act is simple and precise: Fernandes has one final match in which to attempt to move past Henry and De Bruyne and rewrite the single-season assists record.
