With his assist against Brentford, Bruno Fernandes reached 140 Premier League goal contributions for Manchester United, hitting the milestone faster than club legend Cristiano Ronaldo. Bruno Fernandes is wrapping up yet another season as Manchester United‘s most influential player, a distinction he has held since arriving at Old Trafford in 2020. More than six years on, the Portuguese midfielder has now reached the 140 Premier League goal contribution milestone in fewer appearances than Cristiano Ronaldo managed for the same club.
Despite having genuine opportunities to leave on multiple occasions, most notably during last summer’s transfer window, Fernandes chose to stay and captain United through a season without European soccer. The decision has paid dividends, with the club now on the brink of Champions League qualification, largely on the strength of his continued output.
His assist to Benjamin Sesko in last week’s 2-1 win over Brentford brought Fernandes to exactly 140 Premier League goal contributions at Manchester United. The split between those contributions is itself remarkable: 70 goals and 70 assists across 226 appearances, a perfectly even balance that underlines his rare ability to function as both a finisher and a creator at the highest level.
Cristiano Ronaldo reached the same 140-contribution mark across his two stints at the club, but it took him 236 Premier League appearances to get there, ten more than Fernandes. As a more natural forward, Ronaldo’s breakdown was more weighted toward goals, scoring 103 and providing 37 assists during his time in Manchester.
Benjamin Sesko of Manchester United celebrates with Bruno Fernandes.
Ronaldo and Fernandes: two of the most influential Portuguese players in United’s history
During his first stint at Old Trafford from 2003 to 2009, Ronaldo was still developing into the elite goalscorer he would become at Real Madrid. Nevertheless, under Sir Alex Ferguson, he made 196 Premier League appearances, scoring 84 goals and recording 34 assists, and played a central role in delivering one of the club’s last league titles as well as its most recent Champions League trophy in 2008.
His second chapter at the club, prompted in part by Sir Alex’s personal intervention to steer him away from Manchester City, saw Ronaldo return as a veteran and eventually complete his 140-contribution landmark. Between August 2021 and his abrupt departure in November 2022, he added 40 more Premier League appearances, scoring 19 goals and contributing three assists.
Fernandes, meanwhile, arrived from Sporting CP as a mature, finished product and immediately assumed responsibility for driving the team’s attack, adapting quickly to the demands of the Premier League but without the domestic trophy haul that defined Ronaldo’s first stint. His finest individual season came in 2020-21, when he scored 18 goals and registered 12 assists across 37 league appearances.
Heading into the final stretch of the current season, Fernandes sits on 19 league assists, one short of the all-time single-season Premier League record of 20, while also having added eight goals this campaign. Though his time at United has not been defined by silverware in the way Ronaldo’s first spell was, both men stand as the two most influential Portuguese players in the club’s modern era: one who shaped the club’s greatest years and another who became its standard-bearer through its most difficult period.