Southampton 1-4 Manchester City: Kevin De Bruyne delivered his 100th assist in the Premier League on Saturday evening. Of course that assist was on the returned top scorer Erling Haaland. De Bruyne is only the fifth player to reach 100 assists in the current Premier League era, but the Belgian is a lot faster than several icons.
De Bruyne pulverizes big names with insanely fast anniversary party
Ryan Giggs still leads the list with 162 assists, but the Welshman needed 367 games to reach that number. De Bruyne played his 237th game in the Premier League against Southampton on Saturday evening and is therefore almost one in two in the English league. De Bruyne gave 99 assists in the shirt of Manchester City, on August 18, 2013 he enabled Chelsea teammate Oscar to score against Hull City.
Not a single player of the 100 assist club comes to the numbers of De Bruyne. Cesc Fàbregas has 111 assists in 293 duels, De Bruyne already has Frank Lampard and Wayne Rooney in his sights.
Erling Haaland equaled an English goal record set by Ruud van Nistelrooij and Mohamed Salah on Saturday evening. The Manchester City striker, back from a groin injury, scored his 44th goal of the season with an overhead kick against Southampton (1-4 win).
Haaland beat Van Nistelrooij with a beautiful bicycle kick record
Due to groin problems, Haaland had to miss Norway’s European Championship qualifiers against Spain (3-0 defeat) and Georgia (1-1) and also missed City’s league match against Liverpool (4-1 win). He was able to participate again on Saturday and ‘of course’ Haaland scored again.
The City top scorer opened the scoring just before half-time, helping Kevin De Bruyne to his 100th Premier League assist , and made it 0-3 in the second half with an overhead kick. That marked his 44th goal of the season for City in all competitions. With that, he is now level with Van Nistelrooij and Salah as the most goalscoring players for a Premier League club in one season. Van Nistelrooij scored 44 times for Manchester United in 2002/03, Salah in 2017/18 for Liverpool.
Shortly after his second goal of the evening, Haaland was taken off by Pep Guardiola. However, the striker still has time to pass Van Nistelrooij and Salah: City will play nine more games in the Premier League, in which it will try to catch up with Arsenal, and will play at least two more matches in the Champions League. Bayern Munich is the opponent in the quarterfinals. Der Rekordmeister , like Arsenal, has been warned: Haaland is completely back.
Partly thanks to Haaland’s double, City had a good dress rehearsal. For the first leg against Bayern, next Wednesday at the Etihad Stadium. In addition to the Norwegian, Jack Grealish (0-2) . Julian Álvarez (penalty kick, 1-4) also scored for the champion; on behalf of Southampton, Sekou Mara was accurate. At City, Nathan Aké was within the lines until ten minutes before the end.
