On Sunday, Mesut Özil reached 50 Premier League assists with his set-piece delivery for Shkodran Mustafi, but how does that rank among the club’s best ever creative players?
By now you’ve probably heard that Özil reached that 50 league assists landmark quicker than anyone in the competition’s history. The German has long been known as the assist king in Europe, and he’s lived up to that title well in North London.
Let’s look at how far he needs to go to reach the club’s record total, by evaluating the current top five:
2Thierry Henry (74)
Arsenal’s record goalscorer is also their second highest Premier League assist-provider.
Henry holds that record for assists in a single season that Özil came so close to breaking a couple of seasons ago.
It says a lot about his quality that he could score such a massive number of goals for the club and still rack up so many assists at the same time.
Just like Fabregas and van Persie, Henry spent eight seasons at the club. Clearly he made better use of his time though, out-assisting and outscoring both.
More importantly, he helped the team to a couple of Premier League titles, as well as three FA Cups (although he didn’t play in the final for the third).
Stats:
- First Arsenal assist: For Lee Dixon vs Leicester City in a 3-0 win.
- Final Arsenal assist: For Kolo Toure vs Blackburn Rovers in a 2-0 win.
- Best assist tally: 20 (2002/03)
- Assists per game: 0.29