Kevin De Bruyne Is the Best Player in the Premier League

Can he break Thierry Henry's assist record?

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Today’s topic is another donation-funded reader request. This one’s from Joe, who asked me to write anything about Kevin De Bruyne.

The Premier League is about to be back, and Liverpool are about to win the league. Want to bet on them? You’ll need to drop a thousand bucks just to win a dollar. Six points is their magic number. They’re averaging 2.8 points per match, and there are ... nine games remaining. Given that they’ve been bounced from the Champions League, the only question left is whether or not they break the points record: 100, set by Manchester City in 2017-18. Keep up the current pace, and they’ll shatter it, finishing up at an incomprehensible 107 points. A more sedate prediction model, like, say, FiveThirtyEight’s club ranking system, seems them finishing on 101.

We’ll see if they even go for it, given the increased injury risk after an extended period of time off. We’ll also see if England is even able to pull this spate of games off without a hitch, given a governmental infrastructure that is, er, not quite as organized as the one the Bundesliga has nearly wrapped things up within. But before the pandemic paused everything, Jurgen Klopp’s side were the best team England has ever seen through the first 29 games of a season.

What’s more, the best player in the league, who’s currently enjoying perhaps the best creative season England has ever seen, doesn’t even play for Liverpool.

The record for most assists in a Premier League season was set by Arsenal’s Thierry Henry: 20 in the 2002-03 season. That’s absurd, both because he only broke double digits in Europe one other time in his career and because he also scored 20 non-penalty goals. There are a few Premier League seasons with more total goals+assists and/or a better per 90 rate, but obviously no one else in England has gone 20/20. Lionel Messi, who has only failed to hit double-digit assists in three of his 14 full seasons as a pro, hasn’t done it either. Poor guy will have to live with that 50/16 season in 2011-12 or that pathetic 31/19 the year before.

Wouldn’t it be a little more fun if soccer was better at tracking and appreciating these individual records? Baseball has done A LOT wrong, but the sport has built a deep history with its extensive record-keeping. Every season builds on and competes against all the ones that came before. Even when the race for playoff spots fizzle out early, there are plenty of individual records -- homers, batting average, hit streaks, strikeouts, etc. -- for fans to follow along with. Since most domestic soccer seasons nowadays become dead rubbers by March, record chases would add some new texture and intrigue to the final few months of each year.

And so I am here to suggest that we all follow along as Kevin De Bruyne makes a run for Henry’s record. Per FBRef, Henry averaged 0.55 assists per 90 minutes in 02-03. KDB’s pace is currently all the way up at 0.71. He’s made 25 starts and has 17 helpers, per FBRef. His expected-assist clip is a bit lower -- helps to play on Manchester City (or Invincibles-Era Arsenal) -- but even that number is sliiiiiiightly above Henry’s assist rate: 0.56. Unlike most of the rest of the league, City have 10 games left. If KDB creates a goal in half of the remaining games, he’ll beat Henry’s record by two. However, official PL data only has KDB on 16 assists, so the every-other-game rate will only get him to 21, but that would still be enough.

Stats Perform data only goes back to 2008-09 so we can’t plot Henry here or someone like David Beckham or Dennis Bergkamp, but here’s how KDB compares to every other player who has started at least 19 games in a single Premier League season since then:

He’s almost literally off the charts. The Stats Perform data also has KDB with a significantly higher expected-assist rate than FBRef, which reverses a bit of the backpedalled expectations from him having 16 -- not 17 -- assists.

KDB doesn’t just stand out because of his production; he’s unique in how he does it, too. There’s a pretty clear connection between the number of through balls a player completes and the quality of chances he creates. Through balls remove the defense from the equation and typically lead to high-quality chances on their own. Plus, if a player is consistently splitting the defense with passes, it probably means he’s a skilled passer and is constantly getting on the ball in positions to make plays that lead to shots. From the same cadre of players:

KDB is the highest dot, essentially the player with the largest divergence between the number of through balls and quality of chances he’s creating. Farthest right -- and second- and third-farthest right -- is/are Cesc Fabregas’s three consecutive seasons with Arsenal, from 2008 to 2011. He’s the only player to complete at least 0.9 through balls per 90 minutes, and he did it three times. In 2010-11 he averaged 1.81 per 90. Henry hit 20 assists, but Cesc is Arsenal’s king of creativity.

Among the top 25 players in through-ball rate, just one season came after the 2014 World Cup, and that was in the first season after it: KDB’s current teammate David Silva in 14-15. What I think this speaks to: The best teams are, more than ever before, creating chances with sustained deep possession and high turnovers. That’s taking the place of the through ball. On top of that, teams are way less reliant on single advanced playmakers than they used to be.

However, the thing Cesc and KDB have in common is that they were both more midfielders than attackers. It makes sense, then, that a player farther back, like Fabregas was at Arsenal, would have a heavier diet of through balls compared to actual chances created. Except, De Bruyne might even occupy a theoretically more traditional central midfield position than his mirror image did, and he’s only ramped up the pass-before-the-shot production as he’s taken on a deeper role.

I broke down all of De Bruyne’s nine chances created against Tottenham back in August, and that was the best showcase of all the ways he can create, crammed into a 90-minute sample. The most striking thing about him is just how hard and how pure he hits the ball. The classic image of a creator is all subtle touches and molecular-level measured reverse passes that no one else can see. KDB is creating by destroying; the speed and shape he can put on the ball will demolish even the most perfectly organized defensive structure. His first assist against Watford is the signature pass:

When a player can magic up a 90-percent chance for a teammate from a non-threatening area of the field -- 40 yards out, close to the sideline, against a set defense -- then what’s an opponent supposed to do? Play a higher line, and you’re cooked by the runs in behind by City’s collection of superstar attackers. Play even deeper, and City will push your back line into the stands. Man mark De Bruyne? Maybe that would take him out of the game, but then there’s more space for everyone else.

In a way, this is nothing new. KDB had 17 assists three years ago and 16 when City hit 100 points. He’s the only player in league history with three 15-assist seasons, and he’s also the fastest player to reach 50 total league assists. In fact, he reached 19 assists with Wolfsburg back in 2014-15, when he won Bundesliga Player of the Year while his current coach was managing Bayern Munich. (That was a league record, and it’s since been broken by Thomas Muller.) However, a couple little things have shifted. Here’s what Dan Altman, who founded the site Smarterscout, told me:

The key thing that sticks out to me is the increased aggressiveness in his passing. Relative to other Premier League CMs, he now rates 87 on a scale of 0-99 for passing towards goal.  Looking back at earlier seasons in the Premier League, his ratings were 83, 78, 77, and 79.  While his passing has gotten more incisive, his dribbling has gone down – he used to take players on much more than average (89 in 2016-17), and now he's down to a 46.  He's also defending less, but that may mean that he's more focused on getting into position to make these passes. Regardless, it's clear that the focus of his game has shifted slightly, and you can see the end product in his huge assists total

In the Big Five Leagues, he’s behind only Trent Alexander-Arnold and, of course, Fabregas, in progressive passes completed per 90 minutes, per FBRef. For the unfamiliar, a definition: “Completed passes that move the ball towards the opponent's goal at least 10 yards from its furthest point in the last six passes, or completed passes into the penalty area. Excludes passes from the defending 40% of the pitch.”

Altman also mentioned a slight change in KDB’s positioning, which has shifted to a more right-side-heavy role. You can see it in this Stats Perform heat map of all his passes this season. He’s always tended toward that sideline while at City, but it’s been especially pronounced in 19-20:

Taken all together, the slight shift, the aggro passing, the deemphasized defending have produced something we really haven’t ever seen before. Altman’s site keeps free data for 28 leagues across the world back to the 2016-17 season. Every player’s performance can be standardized to a Premier League level both for attacking and defensive play. Here’s the list of center mids with at least 600 minutes played who’ve achieved a 99 attacking rating:

Doesn’t really get much clearer than that, huh? 

While City themselves don’t have much to play for domestically, the assist record would be a fitting end to what De Bruyne’s done this year. He turns 29 in a couple weeks, so he’s maybe got one or two more years at his peak. On top of that, City are still staring down a two-year Champions League ban, and they’ll learn next month whether or not their appeal made any difference. Individual seasons like this are fragile; they’re only really possible when a perfect player meets a perfect coach meets a perfect set of teammates. Chances are, this is the best Kevin De Bruyne will ever be. 

So, the chase for 21 assists starts tomorrow, against Henry’s former club, Arsenal. When these sides met earlier this season, City won, 3-0, with two goals and an assist from De Bruyne. That’d be one hell of a start -- and it also wouldn’t be anything new.