Ange Postecoglou has revealed that his decision to drop Son Heung-min from the Tottenham team to take on Bournemouth is simply down to rotation. Always an automatic starter in the Spurs XI, Postecoglou elected to take the South Korean out of the team and name him on the bench for the game on the south coast.
In Son's absence, Dejan Kulusevski, Dominic Solanke and Brennan Johnson make up Tottenham's attacking trio. Asked to explain Son's omission when speaking in his pre-match interview, Postecoglou highlighted the need to be careful with his players due to a lack of numbers at present.
"Just rotation, mate. We've got so many games and Kulusevski had a rest at the weekend, it's Sonny's turn today," he told Amazon Prime. "We've got to be really careful as we're thin on numbers and we've got to look after our players."
Son, who has spent time on the sidelines through injury this season, has so far contributed four goals and four assists from his first 14 appearances this term. The 32-year-old's form was a talking point when speaking to the media on Wednesday and Postecoglou revealed that people should be wary about writing his player off.
"I think there were questions about Mo [Salah] maybe a year or so ago," said the Australian. "I would be wary about doing that, go for it! It might help me if you write him off!
"I don't get that sense. I still feel from a physical output and the quality he has and certainly from a mentality point of view, I haven't seen it. What I do know is, from my own experience, the end comes pretty quickly. It's not falling off a cliff but you find with a lot of great players that all of a sudden it's gone from bang to bang, it's not a slow deterioration.
"I don't see that in Sonny, I still think he's got a hell of a lot of quality and from a physical standpoint, the way he looks after himself; I don't see his abilities diminishing just due to the age factor at the moment. I don’t see that. You weigh up the output of it and he is not at the level so far this year that he has been in previous years but that's a pretty high standard he's had in the past.
"Can he get there this year? I still think he can. I think a lot of that is down to consistent game time. He's had a bit of a disrupted start this year where's he's had a couple of setbacks where he hasn't played regularly. I think with Sonny the more regularly he plays so the increase in that output. So the answer is no, I don’t think so, and I'd be wary about writing him off."