It’s the return of the old boy, who has a point to prove. Kevin De Bruyne is back in the Premier League and he is back playing for a lighter shade of blue, this time with Manchester City. The other Manchester club paid a bucket load to get the former Chelsea player, after he had set the Bundesliga on fire last season.
Chelsea had signed the Belgian wonder a few seasons back but he could not adjust to Mourinho’s playing style and was shipped out to Wolfsburg where he excelled. The Premier League is now home to two of Belgian’s youngest and brightest talents in Eden Hazard and Kevin De Bruyne but just which player is the better amongst them? We compare the two attackers based on last season’s stats using Squawka.com
Belgian vs. Belgian
The average attack score for both the Belgians is pretty similar; Eden is slightly ahead of Kevin with 34.23 with 34.16 for the new Manchester City signing. In terms of passing the ball, the Chelsea attacker is miles ahead of Kevin with an average of 50 successful passes per game while De Bruyne comes in with 32 successful passes per game.
Key passes is an important attribute for both players since they are attacking fulcrums for their team. De Bruyne comes in with 2.7 key passes on average in a game while Eden Hazard comes in with 2.4 key passes per game that over the course of a season is a big difference. Even in the assists column, it is the new City signing who streaks ahead of Hazard.
De Bruyne averaged 0.6 assists per game, which is a phenomenal stat, while Hazard limped home with 0.2 assists per game for Chelsea last season. Chances created also is another stat that De Bruyne owns over Hazard with 3.3 chances created per game by the City signing while Chelsea’s Hazard only came in with 2.6 chances per game.
Hazard though is a better runner with the ball in terms of taking on his opponents. Hazard won 64% of all his take ons versus his opponents last season while the sprightly De Bruyne only managed a 58% success rate over the season for his former club.
Manchester City certainly have got their hands on a prized asset and it depends on how they deploy him, if they play him in the right position he could be as good as Hazard if not better and as for Chelsea, maybe Mourinho could have tried to get this Belgian back in his team. Chelsea have lacked an edge this season and maybe De Bruyne was the man to get the job done for the Blues.
Comments are closed.