carpediem991
Well-Known Member
- May 31, 2011
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Edit: My fault
Player Watch Player Watch: Son Heung-min
- Thread starter Dharmabum
- Start date
Marty
Audere est farce
- Mar 10, 2005
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The Evolution of Son Heung-min
The South Korean almost left Spurs after a year, then struggled for regular starts, but now he's undoubtedly one of the world's best
theathletic.com
In any case, Son’s ability to play off either foot has been a major reason in his development into an elite-level player. As the below tables illustrate, no Premier League player has registered a higher proportion of shots or goals with their wrong foot since Son joined Tottenham in 2015.
Over the last few years, Son has continued to work on his left foot, ensuring that it remains as strong as his right by staying behind after training and practising with it. Team-mates and coaches say if you watched Son shooting with his left foot, you wouldn’t know he was right-footed. Van der Vaart, who scored some spectacular goals for Spurs with his weaker right foot, says Son’s two-footedness was the quality that instantly struck him, and adds: “I think he doesn’t even know if he’s right or left-footed.”
As for his overall game, Son has developed hugely since 2016-17, even if he has not yet beaten that season’s goal tally. It’s strange to think that back then he wasn’t an automatic starter, and as late as December 2017 Pochettino had to field questions about why he remained so underrated. At this point, he was still behind Dele, Christian Eriksen and Erik Lamela in the pecking order.
But Son’s subsequent performances made him impossible to leave out and harder and harder to keep away from the centre of the pitch. His outstanding displays as a No 9 in Kane’s absence during the 2018-19 season helped Spurs reach the Champions League final, and made the idea of him playing on the left wing feel like a waste of his talents.
Since Mourinho has taken over, Son has started games nominally from the left wing but now plays more as an inside-forward/No 9 hybrid, with Kane dropping deep into more of a No 10 role. As the below graphic shows, Son is currently taking fewer touches than ever before and spending far less time on the flanks than in any of his previous seasons at Spurs.
And as the next graphic shows, meanwhile, this season Son is doing much less defensive work, and focusing almost exclusively on progressive passing and getting shots away.
How good has Son become? There is the argument that he is not quite at the elite level yet, which is why none of the traditional superclubs have tried to sign him. The fact that he is still prone to the odd goal drought supports this — something that would not be tolerated at a club like Bayern Munich or Real Madrid. It’s also been pointed out that it’s difficult to know if a player is mentally strong enough to play for a club with the pressure of, say, Barcelona if they are approaching 30 and have never done it.
The flipside is that a big reason no club has aggressively pursued him is that he’s always been signed to a long-term contract under a chairman who has zero intention of selling him. Manchester City for instance are understood to have held an interest but have never taken it beyond that, while in scouting circles, he is deemed good enough to play for anyone.
What seems inevitable is that Son will better his 21 personal best for goals this season, having already registered 11 in his first 14 appearances. And his improvement is such that there are those who consider Son to be even more important for the team than Kane. “He is the main player for Tottenham,” Van der Vaart says. “Yes there’s Kane but I think he’s maybe more important. With his pace he’s such a threat, he creates for himself and his team-mates and can score. When he’s not playing, I believe that is a bigger miss than when Kane’s not there. He played really well when Kane wasn’t there.”
Whichever way you fall on that debate, what is clear is that since joining Tottenham, Son has proven himself to be an elite finisher. And beyond Kane, broadening this out to look at the Premier League as a whole, the next graph shows the relationship between goals and xG for all players in the division since Son joined in 2015-16.
The diagonal guidelines indicate by how much a player has scored above/below expected goals. These are important, because they help determine the amount of under/over performance by a player irrespective of how many goals they have scored.
Take Kane for instance, the top goalscorer in the league over this timeframe. Kane has scored 106 non-penalty goals from an xG of 81.6 in this time, scoring almost 24.4 more goals than he would be expected to do given the quality of his shots, which equates to an additional 30 per cent more goals.
Son on the other hand has scored fewer — 62 non-penalty goals from 40.3 xG. As a ratio, though, he’s added 54 per cent more goals than xG suggests that he should have scored.
These guidelines help point out players who have scored more goals than expected at roughly similar rates. Notably, there’s only a handful of players who have consistently beaten their xG in recent seasons.
Focusing on this season, the table below shows that Son has stepped up another level and is averaging 1.11 goals per 90 minutes, while again substantially outscoring his xG.
“He was excellent with me at Leverkusen, and has become world-class at Tottenham,” says Schmidt.
Over the last few years, Son has continued to work on his left foot, ensuring that it remains as strong as his right by staying behind after training and practising with it. Team-mates and coaches say if you watched Son shooting with his left foot, you wouldn’t know he was right-footed. Van der Vaart, who scored some spectacular goals for Spurs with his weaker right foot, says Son’s two-footedness was the quality that instantly struck him, and adds: “I think he doesn’t even know if he’s right or left-footed.”
As for his overall game, Son has developed hugely since 2016-17, even if he has not yet beaten that season’s goal tally. It’s strange to think that back then he wasn’t an automatic starter, and as late as December 2017 Pochettino had to field questions about why he remained so underrated. At this point, he was still behind Dele, Christian Eriksen and Erik Lamela in the pecking order.
But Son’s subsequent performances made him impossible to leave out and harder and harder to keep away from the centre of the pitch. His outstanding displays as a No 9 in Kane’s absence during the 2018-19 season helped Spurs reach the Champions League final, and made the idea of him playing on the left wing feel like a waste of his talents.
Since Mourinho has taken over, Son has started games nominally from the left wing but now plays more as an inside-forward/No 9 hybrid, with Kane dropping deep into more of a No 10 role. As the below graphic shows, Son is currently taking fewer touches than ever before and spending far less time on the flanks than in any of his previous seasons at Spurs.
And as the next graphic shows, meanwhile, this season Son is doing much less defensive work, and focusing almost exclusively on progressive passing and getting shots away.
How good has Son become? There is the argument that he is not quite at the elite level yet, which is why none of the traditional superclubs have tried to sign him. The fact that he is still prone to the odd goal drought supports this — something that would not be tolerated at a club like Bayern Munich or Real Madrid. It’s also been pointed out that it’s difficult to know if a player is mentally strong enough to play for a club with the pressure of, say, Barcelona if they are approaching 30 and have never done it.
The flipside is that a big reason no club has aggressively pursued him is that he’s always been signed to a long-term contract under a chairman who has zero intention of selling him. Manchester City for instance are understood to have held an interest but have never taken it beyond that, while in scouting circles, he is deemed good enough to play for anyone.
What seems inevitable is that Son will better his 21 personal best for goals this season, having already registered 11 in his first 14 appearances. And his improvement is such that there are those who consider Son to be even more important for the team than Kane. “He is the main player for Tottenham,” Van der Vaart says. “Yes there’s Kane but I think he’s maybe more important. With his pace he’s such a threat, he creates for himself and his team-mates and can score. When he’s not playing, I believe that is a bigger miss than when Kane’s not there. He played really well when Kane wasn’t there.”
Whichever way you fall on that debate, what is clear is that since joining Tottenham, Son has proven himself to be an elite finisher. And beyond Kane, broadening this out to look at the Premier League as a whole, the next graph shows the relationship between goals and xG for all players in the division since Son joined in 2015-16.
The diagonal guidelines indicate by how much a player has scored above/below expected goals. These are important, because they help determine the amount of under/over performance by a player irrespective of how many goals they have scored.
Take Kane for instance, the top goalscorer in the league over this timeframe. Kane has scored 106 non-penalty goals from an xG of 81.6 in this time, scoring almost 24.4 more goals than he would be expected to do given the quality of his shots, which equates to an additional 30 per cent more goals.
Son on the other hand has scored fewer — 62 non-penalty goals from 40.3 xG. As a ratio, though, he’s added 54 per cent more goals than xG suggests that he should have scored.
These guidelines help point out players who have scored more goals than expected at roughly similar rates. Notably, there’s only a handful of players who have consistently beaten their xG in recent seasons.
Focusing on this season, the table below shows that Son has stepped up another level and is averaging 1.11 goals per 90 minutes, while again substantially outscoring his xG.
“He was excellent with me at Leverkusen, and has become world-class at Tottenham,” says Schmidt.
Marty
Audere est farce
- Mar 10, 2005
- 40,319
- 64,470
You won't be disappointed
carmeldevil
Well-Known Member
- May 15, 2018
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weststandyid
Well-Known Member
- Jun 4, 2004
- 459
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great news and much deserved. if he's not already there because of a degree of streakiness, he's verging on world class.
carmeldevil
Well-Known Member
- May 15, 2018
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Like I've said many times, PAY.THE.MAN.
Trix
Well-Known Member
- Jul 29, 2004
- 19,805
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All in hand. Don't worry about it. Everyone involved wants this done.
carmeldevil
Well-Known Member
- May 15, 2018
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Doctor Dinkey
Legacy Fan
- Jul 6, 2013
- 3,662
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I would just like to say that Heung-Min Son is a fucking brilliant player.
Montalbano
Well-Known Member
- Jan 29, 2018
- 3,929
- 18,706
He's going to win the Golden Boot this season.
Sorry Harry – you can have the Premier League POTY award and the single season assist record instead this season
Sorry Harry – you can have the Premier League POTY award and the single season assist record instead this season
Neon_Knight_
Well-Known Member
- Jul 20, 2011
- 4,053
- 6,808
Another nice stat for Son - he's scored 63% of his shots this season. That's very impressive by anyone's standards, as the most prolific strikers in the top leagues normally convert about 25% of their shots (Kane, Lewandowski etc.).
Rocksuperstar
Isn't this fun? Isn't fun the best thing to have?
- Jun 6, 2005
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He hit the ball so sweet it gave me diabetes.
I also think I might be pregnant.
I also think I might be pregnant.
Rocksuperstar
Isn't this fun? Isn't fun the best thing to have?
- Jun 6, 2005
- 53,430
- 67,174
Some of my personal favorites from what I like to consider a sort of Flexo to our Bender, ArsenalMania;
(look at the time stamp ^ )
But let us all put aside our rivalry to appreciate a pearl of a goal
(look at the time stamp ^ )
But let us all put aside our rivalry to appreciate a pearl of a goal
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