The first man in Premier League history!
The day after the match, The Guardian splashed a photo of Su Dong across its front page with a headline like this, once again thrusting him into the spotlight.
Five assists in a single match—this had never happened in Premier League history. Su Dong was the first.
Before the match against Aston Villa, the record for most assists in a single Premier League match was four. More than one player had achieved it, and interestingly, all three players who had managed four assists in a match came from Arsenal.
Bergkamp provided four assists against Leicester City in 1999; the Spanish winger Reyes accomplished the same feat against Middlesbrough in 2006; and finally, in 2009, Fàbregas also supplied four assists against Blackburn, becoming the third player in history to reach that mark.
For more than a decade, Arsenal players had monopolized this list. No one had been able to match it, let alone surpass it, and Arsenal fans had always taken great pleasure in that fact.
Before Man City, the Gunners had been the universally recognized synonym for technical football in the Premier League. Wenger's teams had always been at the forefront of the league technically, playing the most attractive football and frequently running riot, which had left the Gunners' players invincible on this list.
But this time, Man City finally knocked Arsenal from their perch and captured yet another of the Gunners' strongholds.
Su Dong's five assists in a single match completely shattered Arsenal's achievements of the past decade and more, making him the first man in Premier League history to set the record. At the same time, he helped Man City beat Aston Villa 5–0 and claim another three points.
In its report, The Guardian reviewed nearly twenty years of Premier League