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Manchester United midfielder Bruno Fernandes has been crowned the Premier League Player of the Season after an outstanding campaign in which he equalled the league record for most assists in a single season.

The Portuguese playmaker registered 20 assists, matching the tallies previously achieved by Thierry Henry for Arsenal in the 2002-03 season and Kevin De Bruyne for Manchester City in 2019-20.

Fernandes still has one more opportunity to make the record his own when United face Brighton and Hove Albion in their final fixture of the season this weekend.

The United captain saw off stiff competition from Arsenal’s title-winning trio of Gabriel, Declan Rice, and David Raya to claim the top individual honour.

Other nominees for the award included Manchester City’s Erling Haaland and Antoine Semenyo, Nottingham Forest’s Morgan Gibbs-White, and Brentford striker Igor Thiago.

At 31 years old, Fernandes has featured in 34 Premier League matches this season, contributing eight goals in addition to his impressive assist tally. This mirrors his goal total from the previous campaign while doubling his number of assists.

Across his Premier League career so far, Fernandes has made 229 appearances, scoring 70 goals and providing 71 assists.

The midfielder has captained Manchester United to a third-place finish in the Premier League—an achievement that seemed highly unlikely earlier in the season when Ruben Amorim was dismissed in January.

Following Amorim’s departure, Michael Carrick took over as interim manager and successfully guided the team back into the Champions League places while securing a comfortable top-three finish.

On Friday, it was confirmed that Carrick had agreed to a new two-year contract at Old Trafford, formally taking over as the club’s permanent head coach after impressing during his second spell as caretaker boss.

Under Carrick’s management, Fernandes scored three goals but saw his assist numbers surge after being moved from a deeper midfield role under Amorim to his preferred No.10 position behind the main striker in a 4-2-3-1 setup.

Since Carrick’s appointment, Fernandes has created 11 goals for his teammates, underlining his creative influence on the side.

Meanwhile, Nico O’Reilly was named the Premier League Young Player of the Year, edging out strong competition from Junior Kroupi, Lewis Hall, Michael Kayode, Mateus Fernandes, Rayan Cherki, Kobbie Mainoo, and Alex Scott.