It took 23 years for a Premier League player to break Thierry Henry's record

Sunday was a day of celebration for all Arsenal fans everywhere. Down at Selhurst Park, Mikel Arteta and his squad were presented with the Premier League trophy, while hundreds of thousands congregated in Islington to celebrate an historic season. However, at the same time, an Arsenal-adjacent record was taken away.

Down by the South Coast, Patrick Dorgu opened the scoring for Manchester United as they beat Brighton 3-0. This came from a Bruno Fernandes corner, taking the Portuguese midfielder's tally to 21 assists for the season. This is a new out-right record, surpassing Theirry Henry from 2002/03 as well as Kevin De Bruyne in 2019/20, both of whom reached 20.

Most assists in a single Premier League season

Note: Statistics courtesy of Premier League.

In Premier League history, only nine players have accumulated 17 or more assists in a single campaign. Cesc Fàbregas, once for Arsenal, and De Bruyne are the only players to do so more than once, while Mesut Özil reached 19 a decade ago, seemingly destine to smash the record, before a decline during the second half of the campaign.

Bizarrely, of these nine players, only Fàbregas with Chelsea in 2015, Frank Lampard ten years earlier and Mohamed Salah last season have also won the title while racking up this many assists. The season in which Henry scored 24 goals and accumulated 20 assists, Arsène Wenger's team should have won the title but didn't. Late season defeats at the hands of Blackburn and Leeds, as well as draws with Aston Villa, Man United and Bolton, saw them finish five points below Sir Alex Ferguson's team.

The Gunners did still retain the FA Cup, defeating Southampton at the Millennium Stadium, as Henry put in one of the best individual campaigns from any player in English top-flight history. Salah last season is another contender and, without the Egyptian discovering the form of his career, Arteta's team may well have been champions a year earlier.

Nevertheless, this does suggest that clubs cannot be overly reliant on one creator. Including goals, Fernandes was directly involved in 43.5% of Manchester United's goals this season, which is unlikely to be sustainable when Michael Carrick's team have a European campaign to juggle too.

Premier League champions Arsenal meantime have always shared the goals around under Arteta, ever since Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was frozen out and eventually let go. Many have cited this as a reason why Arsenal won't ever become champions, but it seems to have all worked out, hasn't it?

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