Manchester United must feel as though they've struck gold by signing Bruno Fernandes this season.The FA Cup semi-final defeat to Chelsea aside, United haven't lost a single game since the Portuguese made his debut and that's helped inspire them to a third-place Premier League finish.Champions League football is safely in their grasps and now the club can focus on winning a second Europa League crown in three years with Fernandes inspiring them in the centre.
Fernandes' incredible run of form
Ten goals and eight assists is an impressive record from his first 20 games at United and enough to earn himself a historic two consecutive Premier League Player of the Month awards.
Heck, there's even good reason to think that Fernandes could join the likes of Jordan Henderson and Kevin De Bruyne in the PFA Team of the Year despite arriving halfway through the season.
And lest we forget that one of his goals effectively secured Champions League football, holding his nerve from the penalty spot to send United on the way to a crucial 2-0 win over Leicester City.
Fernandes accused of stat-padding
However, believe it or not, there is a small minority of football fans that believe Fernandes has been a tad overrated and that supporters should think twice before overhyping his statistics.
If that's just made your face bright red and steam exhale from your ears, then bear with us a second, because one fan has gone as far as making a Twitter video to prove the point.
Have you ever heard of the phrase 'stat-padding'? Well, that's exactly what Fernandes has been accused of: racking up impressive numbers when, in actual fact, they're pretty underwhelming.
Fernandes video goes viral
The point that's trying to be here is essentially that Fernandes has largely only scored penalties for United and that some of his assists have, well, had little to nothing to do with the goal itself.
Twitter user @jmemc55 has compiled the video in question and it's fair to say it's caused a stir, attracting no less than 6,000 retweets and 27,300 'likes' at the time of writing. Check it out here:
GIVEMESPORT's Kobe Tong says
The video is more a criticism of the fans as opposed to Fernandes when you think about it.
What's Fernandes supposed to do: reject taking penalties or miss them and stop making easy passes even when they make sense?
At the end of the day, an assist is an assist whether it's a two-yard pass or 30-yard diagonal just like a Goal of the Season contender counts for as much on the scoreboards as a scrappy own goal.
So, if there is any credence at all in the video, it's in highlighting that United fans should probably chill out about the impact that Fernandes has made and take his statistics with a pinch of salt.
But even then, just watch one of United's games back in full since he signed and realise the lad is absolute class.
Liverpool and Manchester City would pick him in their starting XI in a heartbeat from where I'm stood.
