Bruno Fernandes was named Premier League Player of the Season after a creative campaign that helped Manchester United finish third and secure Champions League football.
It is the first time Fernandes has won the award. He scored eight goals and matched the Premier League single‑season assist record with 20 in the 2025/26 campaign, and voters also gave him the EA SPORTS Player of the Season honor.
Fernandes directly contributed to 28 goals in 37 Premier League appearances and created 132 chances over the course of the season. Those numbers include the 20th assist he collected late in the run, a milestone that also pushed him past David Beckham's long-standing Manchester United single‑season assist mark of 15 from 1999/2000.
He topped an eight‑man shortlist that included Arsenal's Gabriel, David Raya and Declan Rice, Manchester City pair Erling Haaland and Antoine Semenyo, Brentford forward Igor Thiago and Nottingham Forest's Morgan Gibbs‑White. The season also brought Fernandes the EA SPORTS Player of the Month award in March 2026 and the Football Writers' Association men's Footballer of the Year prize before this latest recognition.
The award is formally given to the standout player across the Premier League season; Fernandes becomes the first Manchester United player to take the honour since Nemanja Matic in 2010/11 and only the seventh United player overall to win it. Club sources say United's third‑place finish sealed a return to the UEFA Champions League.
There is a clear tension in the profile of this season's winner. Fernandes finished with fewer goals than many forwards — eight in the league — yet his assist total equalled the league record and his chance creation was prolific, 132 for the campaign. That contrast underlines the season's argument: influence can come through creating and servicing goals as much as scoring them.
Fernandes himself downplayed spectacle and emphasised results, saying he was very happy for the assist, for the win and to finish the season on a high. He also noted, with an eye on the remaining fixture, that reaching 20 assists was a season high for him and that he was thinking about whether he could get to 21 with one game left.
By surpassing Beckham's mark as United's highest single‑season creator and equalling the Premier League assist record, Fernandes rewrote the creative ledger for both club and league. His 28 direct goal contributions in 37 appearances underline the tangible impact that persuaded voters across the awards that this was the standout individual season.
The immediate consequence is clear: Manchester United will return to the Champions League with Fernandes as their creative fulcrum, and he has now collected both the EA SPORTS Player of the Season title and the league's Player of the Season award for 2025/26. How his role is defined next season — and whether he can push the assist tally even higher — will shape Manchester United's transfer and tactical choices this summer.
