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Why Spurs could be set to sell Son Heung-Min this summer - and how they might replace him.
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A couple of weeks after the new Premier League season starts, on 28 August, Son Heung-Min will celebrate the tenth anniversary of the record transfer which took him from Bayer Leverkusen to Tottenham Hotspur, the club with which he will be forever associated. The only slight problem is that he might not be in North London to enjoy the occasion.
Signed for around £22m back in 2015, Son became the most expensive Asian player in history but would swifty prove to be worth every penny and more. 454 Spurs appearances and 173 Spurs goals later, he will go down as one of his team’s greatest players of the Premier League era, while very few neutral fans won’t have been happy to see the ever-smiling Son finally lift some silverware following the club’s Europa League triumph in Bilbao.
The swell of positive sentiment behind a deeply loveable player may not save him from the axe, however. Sentiment, in general, has little space in the modern game of cold hard stats and balance sheets – and according to The Daily Telegraph, he could be sold before he marks a decade at Spurs. But should they move on from one of their finest servants? And do they have the right replacement lined up?
Why Spurs really could sell Son Heung-Min this summer
It didn’t escape notice that Son, who will turn 33 before the start of next season, struggled to hit his usual high standards over the course of the past year.
A combined total of 27 goals and assists in the Premier League slipped back to 16, and his total of seven league goals was his worst tally since his debut campaign back at the old White Hart Lane, when he was yet to establish himself as a regular starter.
The data behind his performances isn’t all that damning in general, and stats which measure his ability to create chances for his team-mates suggest that he has improved, if anything, but the South Korean looked markedly less dangerous in front of goal.
He was shooting less often, less accurately, and was getting into fewer and fewer dangerous positions. His total expected goals of 7.2 was his lowest mark for a season since the stat started to be recorded in the 2017/18 season, and it more or less halved compared to the last two campaigns when you take penalty kicks out of the equation.
In short, Son, once second only to his old partner Harry Kane in terms of goal threat for Spurs, lost his bite. Under Ange Postecoglou, who has now been giving his marching orders, Spurs scored at a healthy rate and created plenty of opportunities, but a player who was once on the end of a great many and scored plenty of them was less incisive and almost less instinctive around the box.
The worry is that when a player starting to inch towards their mid-thirties shows signs of decay, it may be irreversible. Son’s struggles with a persistent foot injury over the closing weeks of the season may raise alarms too, given that he has so rarely failed to be healthy. There are signs that his time at Spurs may be drawing towards a natural conclusion.
Most of the time, that might have meant a farewell tour as he plays out the final year of his current contract with Tottenham. Few players have done more to earn the right to the tearful goodbye as they soak up the adulation of the crowd on a pre-planned date after one last year. But since when did modern football care for such moving scenes? Certainly not since the Saudi Pro League reared its head.
The Telegraph claim that there is sincere interest from Saudi teams in a player who remains immensely marketable in Asia, and while the specific team is not mentioned – nor the inevitably inflated financial details that might be involved – the suggestion is that Spurs would happily cash out given an unexpected opportunity to do so.
It would be a cold and calculating move, but then chairman Daniel Levy has repeatedly claimed that Spurs are operating under tighter financial restrictions than might be expected and selling the ageing and latterly underwhelming Son would open up some breathing space in the coming transfer window. It would be an unpleasant, unsentimental decision. It may also be the right one.
The suggestion seems to be that Spurs are ready to accept that Son’s time in north London is drawing to a natural close, and will cash in if they can. But do they have the right replacement in mind?
Could Yoane Wissa replace Son Heung-Min at Tottenham?
If Son does leave, of course, a replacement will be called for – likely one who would cost more than the money brought in by selling the South Korean. Still, it may make economic sense to replace him at less of a loss now than to wait a year.
The Athletic’s recent transfer reporting named just one player as being firmly on Spurs’ shortlist for the next few months: versatile Brentford forward winger Yoane Wissa, who typically operates as a number nine for his current club but can play on the left wing and usually does so for the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The 28-year-old is older than the players Spurs normally sign, and likely wouldn’t come cheap given that Brentford rejected offers in the region of £20m outright in January, but likely offers the kind of penetrative goal threat that Son failed to provide last season, even if he may not have all of the same guile and creativity. In this last transfer window, the Evening Standard claimed that the Bees wouldn’t sell their star forward for a penny less than £40m.
Wissa scored 19 times this last year, his best tally yet by some distance, and it’s hard to argue with the quality or precision of his finishing or his capacity to find half a yard in the penalty area when required.
With Dominic Solanke spending rather too much time on the treatment table this year, Spurs could do with a player who could cover the central striker role while also offering firepower from the flank, and while Wissa doesn’t play on the left in the Premier League often enough for us to have the data to know if he’d be quite as threatening there as he is through the middle, he clearly has most of the right skill set.
He may not replicate Son’s ability to tee chances up, however. Positional responsibilities will once again play a role, but Wissa created fewer than half as many shooting chances per game compared to Son last season and registered just four assists. Even digging into the minutiae, he completes far fewer passes in and around the box and beats defenders on the dribble considerably less often compared to the player he might replace.
Wissa, in short, can’t be counted on as a wellspring of opportunity for those around him, and signing him to play on the left would hint at the need for a slight change of tack to emphasise chance creation in other areas – hopefully with the reward being more players who can score regularly getting into more threatening positions.
It could well work. Having two players who know where the back of the net is in Solanke and Wissa might pay dividends, even if they would have a long way to go to replicate the success of Son and Kane. But Wissa lacks Son’s all-round game despite his prolific record in front of goal.
That being said, replacing Son straight up won’t be easy whoever Spurs sign. The Athletic’s reporting does not hint at the story linking Son to Saudi Arabia, and as such it can’t be taken to mean that Levy or his transfer team view Wissa as a direct replacement. It may well be that if Son leaves and Wissa comes in, another left winger would be on the menu anyway, especially with the likelihood that Richarlison, Timo Werner, Bryan Gil and Manor Solomon all leave on permanent deals.
But Wissa taking over from Son is an intriguing prospect. He scores goals, and statistically sits among the best strikers in the league. He’s versatile, and if he could strike up an understanding with the players who would play around him – especially Solanke and James Maddison – there could be plenty to get excited about.
No Spurs fan will be happy to see Son leave, especially if he doesn’t get the chance to say a proper goodbye in a year’s time in front of the fans who have adored him for the past decade. It may be time, however, and Wissa may well be a replacement that dries the eyes reasonably swiftly. What’s more, there’s every chance that Thomas Frank could be at the helm of Spurs next season - it might just be a match made in heaven.