🦁 Premier League Player of the Week: Shady's back | OneFootball

With only half of the Premier League in action this weekend, it made our choice of Player of the Week slightly easier.

And the winner is …

Kevin De Bruyne (Manchester City)

“The whole country is starting to shake.”

Those were the words of Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp when discussing Kevin De Bruyne’s impending return to action a couple of weeks ago. On Saturday evening, those nationwide shockwaves got a little bit more violent.

After being forced to limp out of the Champions League final in June, De Bruyne recovered from a serious hamstring injury ahead of schedule, and was in the starting line-up when Manchester City began their title defence at Turf Moor on the opening evening of the season.

He had a hand in City’s first goal of the season with a signature whipped cross that night, but his comeback lasted just 23 minutes before he was forced off with a recurrence of that hamstring injury (he later described his hamstring as like “a wet kitchen towel”) and it was finally decided he would undergo surgery that would keep him sidelined for the next four months.

While they may have won two trophies in his absence, it’s fair to say the treble winners were not the same team without their talisman.

A run of just one win in five Premier League matches over November and December threatened to derail their title defence completely, and you have to wonder whether De Bruyne’s influence might have been enough to turn one or two of those draws into wins, which would have put a very different complexion on the title race.

But the champions need not wonder any longer, because on Saturday evening it was a case of cometh the hour, cometh the Kevin.

The Belgian is still some way from full fitness and after a cameo off the bench against Huddersfield in the FA Cup last week, he was on the bench again at St James’ Park, watching on as his team-mates went in front and then fell behind to a pair of excellent Newcastle goals.

In the 69th minute he made his grand entrance, and within five minutes he had made a grand impact.

Until that point in the game, Phil Foden had regularly been picking the ball up in the pocket of space between Newcastle’s midfield and defence, but the England man was struggling to do a great deal with it.

However, the first time De Bruyne received a pass in a similar position he turned and ran at Newcastle’s backline, and with the help of a decoy run from Julián Álvarez, he looked up, picked his spot, and swept the ball majestically into the bottom corner to equalise.

It was more of a pass than a shot, and a perfect example of the technique that has become De Bruyne’s trademark. The man has legs like hockey sticks.

He wasn’t done there either. With the match heading for a 2-2 draw as the minutes ticked over into stoppage time, De Bruyne received possession in the quarter-back area and in the blink of an eye, he had picked out Oscar Bobb in the penalty area with a heat-seeking missile of a pass.

Bobb’s exquisite control, composure and finish was what ultimately won the game, but it was the 106th Premier League assist of De Bruyne’s career which made it possible. Few players in the league could even dream of an assist like that, and this fella pulls them off when he’s only half-fit.

Is he the best player the Premier League has ever seen? Is he even the best midfielder the Premier League has ever seen? The simple answer is…who cares?

Kevin De Bruyne is 32-years-old and won’t be around forever. Enjoy him while you can.