The votes are in and the best player in the Premier League is Chelsea's Eden Hazard.

The Professional Footballers' Association selected the 24-year-old Belgian as the recipient of this year's award as a result of what has been an unforgettable year for Hazard.

Of course, the immediate questions coming from around the globe have been about where the Belgian compares with the world's two best offensive stars Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.

Hazard has 13 goals and eight assists in 2014-15, one goal less than his Premier League career-high of 14 scored last season. He could still top that number in the next few weeks. His best assist total in England came in 2012-13, when he had 11 helpers and nine goals.

Obviously, those numbers have no comparison with the quantities of Ronaldo and Messi who have made 30-goal seasons look underwhelming and 40-goal years mundane at best. So, to compare Hazard on those standards is unfair to the Chelsea player.

One area where Hazard has reached comparable levels is in his dribbling. He has a whopping 4.7 dribbles per game in England and in the Champions League he averaged a wondrous 7.3 dribbles per game. Messi had never actually reached those heights in any competitions (his 7.1 dribbles per game in this year's UCL is his career best). His career-average however is 4.7 dribbles per game, a total that Hazard has never managed aside from this year's UCL. He is better than Ronaldo in this category.

He is also better than Ronaldo at creating key passes per game, and his 2.7 key passes per game this year are better than Messi as well; he is currently third in the Premier League and would be second in Spain behind Nolito and ahead of Messi. And he is creating those chances with fewer passes than Messi. What is most impressive is that Hazard's passing success rate is far superior to that of Messi and Ronaldo; he has connected on 86.9 percent of his passes in England this year while Messi has connected on 83 percent of his passes.

And defensively he manages to average more tackles per game than either player as well as more interceptions per game.

There are still many gaps in his game that he will have to improve on, but there is no doubt that Hazard, while likely never to put up five straight 50-goal seasons (a feat Ronaldo just accomplished), is a tremendously gifted offensive player in his own right.

More importantly, he is on the verge of leading Chelsea to a trophy, something that Ronaldo and Messi have yet to lock up conclusively. There is still a chance that neither superstar gets a major team trophy, something that Hazard has all but secured with Chelsea.

As he enters his prime years, fans can be sure that he will continue to impress. But it will be interesting to see how high his ceiling truly is.

All statistics are from WhoScored.com