Bruno Fernandes became the Premier League single-season assist leader when Patrick Dorgu converted from a Fernandes corner during Manchester United\u2019s trip to Brighton & Hove Albion on Sunday. The move arrived after 33 minutes, Dorgu heading home to register what proved to be the Portugal midfielder\u2019s 21st assist of the campaign.<\/p>\n
The milestone moved Fernandes clear of the previous Premier League benchmark. Thierry Henry\u2019s 2002\u201303 total of 20 and Kevin De Bruyne\u2019s 2019\u201320 haul of 20 had stood as the high-water marks until this final-day intervention. The wider list of high single-season assist totals named in this campaign also includes Mesut \u00d6zil (2015\u201316, 19) and multiple seasons with 18 or 17 assists recorded by Cesc F\u00e0bregas, Frank Lampard, Kevin De Bruyne and Mohamed Salah.<\/p>\n
Fernandes made no secret of how much the target mattered in the run-up to the match. \u201cIt\u2019s something that I think about because we are talking about Kevin and Thierry, they were two of the best players that the Premier League has seen in a long, long time,\u201d he told Sky Sports. \u201cHaving the chance to be up there with their names\u2014just for this category, let\u2019s not talk about the rest they have done in the Premier League\u2014is very good, and I’m very proud of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The record crowns a season that already yielded major individual honours for Fernandes. He has been crowned the Premier League Player of the Season and the Football Writers\u2019 Association Footballer of the Year. While 21 assists is enough to set a new mark for the Premier League, it only ties the record from across Europe\u2019s major leagues.<\/p>\n
The assist against Brighton & Hove Albion provided a fitting final-day cap to a campaign defined by creative consistency and set-piece precision, and it altered the statistical ledger for single-season playmaking in England\u2019s top flight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bruno Fernandes set the Premier League single-season assist record with his 21st assist at Brighton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14025,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[773,179,172],"tags":[1162,1637,342],"class_list":["post-14026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brighton-hove-albion","category-manchester-united","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-assists","tag-bruno-fernandes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}