Bruno Fernandes, 31, is the standout player for Manchester United. However, they should not renew his contract.

Here is a compilation of players who have recorded more assists in a Premier League season than Bruno Fernandes currently has:

– Accomplished it twice: Kevin De Bruyne and Cesc Fàbregas
– Accomplished it once: Thierry Henry, Mesut Özil, Frank Lampard, and Mohamed Salah

If tasked with creating a list of the most creative players in Premier League history, it would likely include those six. Eric Cantona never surpassed Bruno’s existing tally, while players such as David Beckham, David Silva, Eden Hazard, Steven Gerrard, Trent Alexander-Arnold, and any other names you might consider relevant have not assisted as many Premier League goals as Manchester United’s captain has this season.

The distinction between Fernandes and the previously mentioned players is that he still has seven matches remaining. If he maintains his current rate of approximately 0.6 assists per 90 minutes, he will equal the record of 20 set by Henry in 2002-03 and matched by De Bruyne in 2019-20. He could potentially exceed it as well.

In essence, Bruno is crafting what could be regarded as the most remarkable creative season in Premier League history. This performance is propelling Manchester United toward what is likely to be a third-place finish, following a 15th-place finish the previous year. They hold a plus-17 goal differential when he is on the pitch, while they have been outscored by a goal when he is absent.

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At the conclusion of the season, there will only be one year remaining on Bruno’s contract, but the choice is clear: You do everything possible to retain an all-time Premier League great at your club … correct? To understand why the answer isn’t so straightforward, Manchester United need only to look approximately 35 miles to the west at the club now tied with them for the most first-division titles in English football history.

How Bruno does everything for Man United

It is not an exaggeration to assert that Manchester United might be competing in the Championship if it were not for Bruno Fernandes. While it may be an overstatement, without him, they would not simply have the same squad minus Bruno. They would have recruited other players who might have matched some of his output. However, it is highly unlikely that anyone else could have achieved what he has.

Since January 2020 in the Premier League, Bruno has:

– scored 70 goals, while no other United player has exceeded 48
– created 67 assists, while no other United player has surpassed 22
– attempted 610 shots, while no other United player has more than 314
– created 638 chances, while no other United player has more than 190
– played 171 through balls, while no other United player has more than 38
– made 1,887 passes into the final third, while no other United player has more than 909
– won possession 1,182 times, while no other United player has more than 781

Select any facet of soccer, aside from perhaps winning headers or saving shots, and Bruno has been the most crucial United player throughout the current decade.

While I have occasionally questioned whether their Brunodependencia has limited United’s potential, that becomes irrelevant once you find yourself in the lower half of the table. During his tenure at the club, United averages a plus-0.38 goal differential per 90 minutes when he is on the field; they are outscored by 0.11 goals per 90 minutes when he is not present.

Thus, it is easy to observe all of this and conclude that everything will collapse without Bruno. Who else will handle, well, everything? However, the reality is that regardless of whether they re-sign him, Manchester United will not retain this version of Bruno for long — and they may never have him again.

Why the age curve comes for everyone

This chart illustrates what we mean when discussing the “age curve.” It displays every minute played by what Opta identified as attacking midfielders since the beginning of the 2008-09 Premier League season, categorized by age:

The majority of a Premier League career at this position occurs between the ages of 22 and 29. After that, there is a significant decline at every age. Most players eventually begin to decline as they age, and Bruno will turn 32 in September.

He may be the top player in the Premier League at present, but here is something I previously wrote about the best player in the Premier League last season:

To re-sign Salah, Liverpool would need to take the risk of paying him as one of the best players in the world — precisely when he ceases to be one of the best players in the world. However, Salah is already an outlier, so it may be more appropriate to compare him to other players of his age and caliber — rather than the general Premier League population.

You can substitute most of those proper nouns with “Bruno Fernandes” and “Manchester United,” and the situation is quite similar.

When I compared Salah to the only players still producing at his level at his age, the age curve appeared much more favorable: Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and Robert Lewandowski continued to score goals and win matches at the highest level as they entered their 30s. Given that Salah has maintained exceptional fitness and rarely gets injured, it seemed reasonable to assign him a much higher probability of sustaining his elite performance beyond what the age curve suggested might occur.

Although my fiancée does not have the same enthusiasm for seeing Bruno without his shirt as she does when Salah appears, clothed, on a television screen, the Portuguese star has demonstrated a comparable, if not greater, level of consistency and durability as the Liverpool icon. In fact, across the entire Stats Perform database, Bruno has logged more competitive minutes, at both the international and club levels since the start of 2020, than all but one player: Brazilian goalkeeper Weverton.

If we exclude goalkeepers and defenders, who are less likely to be substituted during a match, here are the top 15:

To summarize: Bruno has played over 2,000 more competitive minutes than any other midfielder or forward since 2020 — that is nearly an entire additional season of game time compared to second-place Declan Rice.

There are two perspectives on this: the best indicator of future injuries is past injuries, suggesting Fernandes is more likely to remain healthy than anyone else. Alternatively, those minutes may soon catch up with him.

What Man United can learn from Salah

You could have anticipated those same two outcomes for Salah at the end of last season — and it turns out that your legs can give out even when your physique resembles something that the Medicis would have commissioned a sculpture for. While Salah’s statistics declined in the latter half of last season, it is questionable whether it is sound analysis to interpret that with anything but skepticism: Liverpool essentially had nothing to compete for by mid-March, and the team and coaching staff were celebrating for the final month of the season. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that he has experienced a significant drop this season.

Salah recorded 47 goals+assists in the Premier League last season, and that figure has decreased to 11 this year. He has never fallen below 26 in his Liverpool career. Liverpool took the risk of compensating Salah as one of the best players in the world right as he ceased to be one of the best players in the world — and that is precisely what transpired. (The same could be said for Virgil van Dijk as well.)

Part of the issue may also stem from the current state of the Premier League. While Lewandowski, Harry Kane, and Luka Modric continue to perform at high levels into their mid-30s and beyond, they are doing so in leagues that are significantly less physical and competitively demanding than England’s top division. This may explain why Salah’s performances and production in the Champions League this season have been much closer to what we expect to see.

We have not seen Bruno in the Champions League this season, which is one of the hidden factors contributing to Manchester United’s success. Research indicates that Premier League teams lose, on average, a point for every two additional matches they play in Europe compared to the previous season. With United completely out of Europe this year — in addition to being eliminated from both domestic cups early on — Bruno will conclude the season with, at most, 36 starts across all competitions. Last season, he started 55 matches; his lowest full-season total at United is 43.

Is it merely a coincidence that he has been his most efficient, in terms of goals+assists per 90 minutes, in the season when he has played the fewest matches? He will participate in the World Cup this summer, and barring a collapse, United will return to the Champions League the following season.

Currently, Bruno still has another season remaining on his contract, which includes a £57 million release clause, and he will not turn 33 until September 2027. His situation does not align perfectly with Salah’s, but broadly, it presents a similar narrative and decision: an exceptionally consistent superstar player is still performing at an elite level in his 30s, and if you could ensure that he would maintain this for a few more seasons, you would grant him whatever he desires. However, that is not how the human body — or anything else — operates.

Salah and Fernandes have both demonstrated that world-class players can continue to excel once they enter their 30s. However, as Liverpool has discovered this season, you are an outlier until you are not, and that is what United must determine.

Will their captain be the exceptional player who defies decline, year after year? Or will time catch up with him, as it does for nearly every other professional soccer player in their 30s, sooner rather than later?