Brian Brobbey scored a hat-trick for Sunderland in their 5-3 defeat at Manchester City on Sunday, becoming only the fifth different player to score three times in a Premier League match and still end up on the losing side. The Netherlands striker’s goals could not prevent Sunderland from being beaten, but they placed him in one of the most select groups in the competition’s record books.
Brobbey’s hat-trick is the sixth instance of a player scoring a treble in a Premier League defeat since the competition was formed in 1992, and the first in the top flight for 19 years. Of the previous occurrences, the most recent came in 2007, and the four others all took place before 2000.
The last player to achieve the feat was Roque Santa Cruz, who scored a hat-trick for Blackburn Rovers in a 5-3 defeat by Wigan Athletic in December 2007. Before him, Dwight Yorke netted three times for Aston Villa in a 4-3 loss at Newcastle United in September 1996, while Dion Dublin hit a treble for Coventry City in a 4-3 defeat at Sheffield Wednesday in December 1995.
Matt Le Tissier is the only player to have suffered the experience twice. The former Southampton forward scored a hat-trick in the Premier League’s inaugural season, in a 4-3 defeat at Oldham Athletic in May 1993, and repeated it in August 1995 during a 4-3 home loss to Nottingham Forest.
Brobbey’s treble at Manchester City therefore stands alongside a short list stretching back to the league’s first season: Le Tissier against Oldham, Le Tissier against Nottingham Forest, Dublin at Sheffield Wednesday, Yorke at Newcastle, Santa Cruz at Wigan and now Brobbey at Manchester City. In more than three decades of Premier League football, no other player has scored three goals in a game his team went on to lose.