De Bruyne vs Lampard vs Gerrard: Who has the best Premier League stats in their prime? | OneFootball

Kevin De Bruyne is one of the greatest players in Premier League history.

The Manchester City star was at his scintillating best during the 4-1 derby victory at the weekend, popping up with two well-taken goals in another step towards four league titles in just five seasons.

And it just so happens that his brace against Manchester United moved him into eight place of midfielders with the most Premier League goal involvements since its inception in 1992.

De Bruyne vs Gerrard vs Lampard

With a formidable record of 51 goals and 81 assists, the Belgian wizard is now chasing the likes of James Milner, David Beckham, David Silva, Cesc Fabregas and Paul Scholes to consolidate his status as a great of English football.

However, De Bruyne still has a long way to go if he wants to become the ultimate goals and assists provider of all Premier League midfielders because it was the usual suspects taking the silver and gold medals.

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Let’s start easy: who’s this iconic character?

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The Premier League icons that are Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard lead the way with 212 and 279 goal contributions respectively, making De Bruyne’s tally of 132 looking relatively pedestrian by comparison.

But even if you’d die on the hill that Gerrard and Lampard are better midfielders than City’s wizard in chief, you’d surely agree that the distance between them isn’t as emphatic as the statistics would have you think.

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Each player’s prime season

Naturally, a large part of that is Gerrard and Lampard having played more games in England’s top-flight, which gave us the idea of levelling the playing field a little bit to settle the debate once and for all.

Ok, maybe it’s a little ambitious to think that it will close the conversation, but we’ve honed in on Gerrard, Lampard and De Bruyne’s finest seasons in the Premier League and seen who has the best statistics of all.

For ‘KDB’, it has to be the 2019/20 campaign in which he won the PFA Players’ Player of the Year award for the first time and equalled Thierry Henry’s record for the most assists in a Premier League season.

Lampard is another obvious pick because he was arguably the best midfielder in the world during the 2009/10 season in which he made Premier League history by scoring 22 goals from deep.

Choosing a prime season for Gerrard is admittedly a little tougher, but we’re going for the 2008/09 term in which he almost brought the league title to Anfield with 16 goals, 11 assists and just two defeats.

Comparing the three stars’ best seasons

So, bearing all of that in mind, we used the Premier League’s official comparison tool to put De Bruyne to the test by contrasting his prime season with Gerrard and Lampard’s masterpieces – and you can check out the results below:

2019/20 De Bruyne vs 2009/10 Lampard

2019/20 De Bruyne vs 2008/09 Gerrard

De Bruyne holds his own

When it comes to team-play statistics, De Bruyne is in a league of his own.

We’ll let you decide how much you want to put that down to the way that Pep Guardiola’s City plays, but you’re clearly doing something right if you’re besting prime Gerrard and Lampard in any department.

After all, even the biggest defenders of the Chelsea and Liverpool icons would probably concede that De Bruyne is the master when it comes to passing; specifically crosses, through balls and interchange.

However, as the statistics show, Gerrard and Lampard still have the upper-hand as both goalscorers and defenders in their pomp.

Considering the nature of Lampard’s playing style and that Gerrard played right behind Fernando Torres in 2008/09, it’s perhaps not mind-blowing to learn that both of them were more lethal than De Bruyne.

Nevertheless, it’s interesting that their more advanced positions didn’t hold them back from besting the City man across metrics like interceptions and tackles with their more combative styles.

So, overall, you’ve probably got to say that Gerrard and Lampard still enjoyed slightly more complete prime seasons than De Bruyne, but nobody comes close to the City star when it’s down to passing and team play.