Kevin De Bruyne breaks Premier League record with 100th assist

Kevin De Bruyne became the quickest player to rack up 100 Premier League assists against Southampton on Saturday but endured a rocky start to life in the division.

Thirteen minutes into his Premier League debut, De Bruyne showed the swiftness of feet and thought which has defined his silk-lined tenure in the English top flight. Taming Eden Hazard’s pass with a deft first touch on his right foot, De Bruyne rapidly stabbed the ball between James Chester’s legs with his left. Oscar toed the ball beyond the outrushing Allan McGregor to give Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea an early lead against Hull City in August 2013.

Frank Lampard netted Chelsea’s second of the afternoon in a breezy late summer victory but De Bruyne would not register his second Premier League assist for two more years. The young Belgian only played another 69 minutes of top-flight football for Chelsea before Jose Mourinho sanctioned a January departure to Wolfsburg. After 18 stellar months in the Bundesliga, Manchester City soon brought De Bruyne back to the Premier League.

Capable of grace and gusto in equal measure, De Bruyne is the only player in City’s current squad that played under Manuel Pellegrini. Pep Guardiola has been openly critical of his star playmaker this term, imploring the Belgian to go back to basics in March despite yet another assist-laden campaign.

De Bruyne’s delicately arced cross into the box for Erling Haaland to thunder past Southampton’s Gavin Bazunu on Saturday was his 14th Premier League assist of the season – only one other player, Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka, has cracked double digits for goals created this term.

This is the fifth season in which De Bruyne has provided ten or more Premier League assists, matching Ryan Giggs’ return. Only Cesc Fabregas, who broke that barrier in six different seasons, can better De Bruyne.

However, not even the prodigious Spaniard can match De Bruyne for the speed with which he has amassed a century of assists. De Bruyne needed just 237 games to bring up his ton, 56 fewer than Fabregas required.

Ryan Giggs leads the competition for total assists – with a tally of 162 which De Bruyne may even struggle to match – but took 367 games to break three figures. Wayne Rooney (445) and Frank Lampard (559) are the only other individuals to record as many as 100 assists since the formation of the Premier League.

Data via Opta

While there is a recorded history of the top creator of every English top-flight goal since 1992, the statistic has only penetrated the public consciousness in the last decade. The stats company Opta had to recruit former England international Don Howe to officially define an assist in 1996 – which he judged to be “the final pass or pass-cum-shot which directly leads to a goal scored by the recipient of the ball”.

Thierry Henry’s astonishing haul of 20 assists in a single season was scarcely mentioned by the end of the 2002/03 campaign – although, perhaps Arsenal’s failure to defend their Premier League title played a role.

De Bruyne is the only player in the history of the competition to have matched Henry’s incredible tally. In 2019/20, City also ceded the title but De Bruyne scrawled his name alongside the Frenchman’s with 20 assists, an incredible accomplishment which was duly recognised with the Premier League’s official Playmaker award – a gong only created in 2018.

With nine games of the current campaign remaining, and a striker of Haaland’s quality to aim at, De Bruyne may well come close to that lofty target once again.

On this edition of Talking Transfers, part of the 90min podcast network, Scott Saunders, Graeme Bailey, Toby Cudworth & Tom Gott discuss Chelsea’s decision to sack Graham Potter, Man City and Real Madrid’s interest in Josko Gvardiol, the futures of William Saliba, Kai Havertz, Randal Kolo Muani & more!

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