Only six months separate Eden Hazard and Kevin De Bruyne, both are fantastic talents and both could be the best stars in the Premier League this season.

But as De Bruyne starts hitting new heights under Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, Hazard still looks to be a player trying to rebuild his career at Chelsea.

After City’s 4-0 win over Bournemouth Pep came out with joyous praise when discussing De Bruyne:

‘I think Kevin is a special player,’

 ‘An outstanding player. He makes everything. Without the ball, he is a fighter; and with the ball, it is clear what he can do.’

‘He is one of the best players I have worked with. When we talk about Messi, he is on his own in the table. It is not allowed, anyone else there. But in the table beside, Kevin can sit there.’

Praise indeed but only last year Jose Mourinho was making similar comments about Hazard:

“Eden is the best player in England. The Premier League is the top competition in the world, [so] he is among the top players.

“He is coming with big status now and was voted one of the top 10 players in Europe last year. In my opinion he should be in the top three not in the top 10.”

But last term Hazard’s form plummeted and at times he looked a shell of the player that had helped Chelsea secure the 2014/15 Premier League title.

He ended last season with better performances including a superb title winning display against Tottenham at the start of May. The fact that it handed Leicester City the title instead of Chelsea shows how late Hazard’s return to form was.

This season both Belgian maestros have started off well, with De Bruyne scoring two and assisting three and Hazard scoring two in his first five league games.

In the last week though as De Bruyne had sensational performances against Man United and Bournemouth, Hazard had pretty anonymous outings as Chelsea slipped up against Swansea City and Liverpool.

Chelsea are now five points adrift of City at the top of the table.

Eden Hazard now needs to look at De Bruyne’s consistent great displays and use that as a momentum to prove himself and better himself too.

The two might be friends and teammates for Belgium but there should be a friendly rivalry between the two when it comes to the league and their club form.

Look at Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, they are better because they have that rivalry between each other. It has been quite toxic at times but the players showed so much determination to outdo each other that they would constantly produce phenomenal world class performances.

So for me, Hazard should look at De Bruyne’s stats/performances and then go all out to better them every week. Then vice-versa with Kevin if Hazard can indeed up his game.

Basically the attitude should be ‘if he scores one, I’ll get two. If he grabs two assists, I need to go for three’.

Both players are tremendous creative magicians who could and should be the Premier League’s best. They should end the season with at least twenty goals and a similar amount of assists.

At the moment De Bruyne is up there and showing everyone what he’s all about but Hazard needs to start taking games by the scruff of the neck again!

Posted on September 18th, 2016 by scott
Filed under: Article