Son Heung-min didn’t have the best individual season, and he turns 33 next month. With one year left on his contract, is it time for Spurs to wave goodbye to a club legend?
Tottenham are in a period of change and regeneration. After finishing 17th in the Premier League last season, they have swapped Ange Postecoglou for Thomas Frank in the dugout as they enter a new era.
Spurs probably don’t have the 17th-best squad in England. Their league position is at least partly explained by Postecoglou’s decision to prioritise the Europa League and compromise their league form in the name of cup glory. And even with that mitigation, our expected points model for 2024-25 says Spurs’ performances were worthy of a 14th-place finish.
Nevertheless, Frank will want to make changes to the squad, not least because of the improvements needed to make this a team capable of competing in the Champions League. And that has to happen pretty quickly with Frank’s debut in the competition coming up this season.
But he will also be wary of changing too much too quickly. While Tottenham clearly need to get better, continuity is also a requirement, namely because there is so much positive feeling at the club after the Europa League win, but also because too much change too quickly rarely works straight away. Just ask Chelsea.
The biggest individual decision of the summer surrounds the future of captain and club legend Son Heung-min, who has just one year left on his contract and turns 33 in a few weeks. He also, crucially, didn’t look himself last season.
Questions about Son’s decline have been around for a few years now. A player whose game has always been about searing pace and explosive movements was always likely to feel the effects of ageing legs more than most, so when he scored 10 Premier League goals and got six assists in 36 appearances in 2022-23, doubts about his longevity started to surface.
However, Son has consistently responded to those sorts of doubts with output on the pitch. The year after that less productive season, the Korean stepped up following Harry Kane’s departure to Bayern Munich by scoring 17 goals (two penalties) and adding 10 assists in 35 Premier League appearances as Spurs finished fifth. Only Ollie Watkins (32) and Phil Foden (27) recorded a greater combined total of non-penalty goals and assists than Son (25).
His 2024-25 was less productive, though, and those doubts have crept back in. Son scored just seven goals (including one penalty) and provided nine assists in his 30 Premier League appearances last season. He also endured an injury-riddled end to the campaign in which he scored just one goal in his final 18 appearances in all competitions.
His performances and output were nothing like the Son we have come to know over his decade in London. Even after taking over penalty duties following Kane’s departure, it was still his lowest league goal return since his debut season at Tottenham in 2015-16, when he started only 13 games.
With his contract coming to an end in a year, it is now time to make a difficult decision: give him a final season at the club or cash in.
Spurs showed with the sacking of Postecoglou that they aren’t going to be driven by emotion. “It was difficult, but we feel that we’ve made the right decision for the club,” chairman Daniel Levy said in an interview published on club channels last week.
It would be more difficult to be as cut-throat with Son, a bona fide legend in N17, as the only star of Mauricio Pochettino’s team who stuck around to see through winning a trophy at the club. He might not have started the Europa League final in Bilbao having only just returned from injury, but there is no denying he fully deserved the moment when he lifted the trophy above his head.
He is the fifth-highest goalscorer in Tottenham’s history, currently on 173 goals, and is only one goal behind Martin Chivers (174) in fourth place, so if he does stay, he will almost certainly jump up another position (third-place Bobby Smith is surely out of reach on 208 goals).
‘Club legend’ barely does him justice. As well as being joint 16th in the overall Premier League top scorers list, with 127 to his name, he is also 17th for assists, on 71. He scored at least 10 goals in eight consecutive seasons between 2016-17 and 2023-24, while also registering at least six assists, too.
There have been few Premier League players, let alone goalscorers, who are as two-footed as Son. Of the 80 players to score 40+ right-footed goals in Premier League history, Son has netted by far the greatest proportion of his goals with his left foot (38.6%). Able to beat a man, go either way, and shoot with either foot, at his best he was almost unplayable at times.
He has looked a little leggy in the past year, though. The flashes of sharpness and individual brilliance have been less common and, particularly in the last few months, he just hasn’t looked anything like the consistent goal threat we have come to know him as.
He scored at a slower rate than he has in any other season at Tottenham, averaging 0.26 non-penalty goals per 90 in Premier League games, while his 0.25 non-penalty expected goals per 90 is his lowest such rate at Spurs.
He has gone through other seasons in which his non-penalty xG has gone almost as low – such as 0.26 xG per 90 in 2020-21 – but he has previously always been been able to rely on exceptional finishing when chances don’t flow freely. In 2020-21, for example, he had chances worth just 8.9 xG over the entire season but scored 16 goals in total, an overperformance of +7.1.
In 2024-25, he registered shots worth just 5.8 xG over the entire season and outscored that total by just 0.2, scoring six non-penalty goals. It is worth saying that Son has had ineffective campaigns in front of goal before, though, and he has always bounced back, but it’s still hard to escape the feeling of a decline in his game as he approaches his 34th year.
However, the numbers around other parts of his game suggest he is still performing at an adequate level. His 0.38 assists per 90 is the best rate of his entire Spurs career, while he recorded his second-highest rate of open-play chances created per 90, with 1.9.
His 0.68 big chances created per 90 was not only the best of his career, it was also the fifth best of all Premier League players in 2024-25, behind Bukayo Saka, Dwight McNeil, Kevin De Bruyne and Mohamed Salah (1,000+ mins played).
Some less tangible factors are also worthy of consideration.
Spurs made a concerted effort over the Postecoglou era to make the squad younger, and that meant many of the club’s leaders left. Kane, Hugo Lloris, Eric Dier and Pierre-Emile Højbjerg have all departed in the last two years.
Son has become even more important as a result. He played an integral role last season for his leadership and standard setting both on and off the pitch, and it’s difficult to predict how significant losing that input would prove.
He clearly still makes a huge difference to the team, with most of Tottenham’s best results and performances this season coming when Son played. Yes, he didn’t play much in the climax to the Europa League campaign, but nobody can say Spurs played particularly well in attack on their way to winning that competition.
Tottenham’s results in the Premier League speak volumes. Spurs won 41.7% of the 24 games Son started in 2024-25, compared to a woeful 7.1% without him. That’s one win from 14 games with their captain missing.
They scored 2.1 goals per game when he started, compared to 1.0 per game without him. They won 1.4 points per game with him and 0.4 per game when he was absent.
Clearly, that difference can’t be entirely attributed to Son, but his impact on his teammates also should not be underestimated. He raises the quality of others just by being on the pitch. Without him, Spurs lack a leader.
Reports suggest the decision will be left up to Son, and Spurs won’t force him out of the club if he doesn’t want to go.
But the numbers show that last season could have been a whole lot worse if Son wasn’t there, so it might even be worth Tottenham persuading their captain to see out his contract, even if that means losing him for free in a year.
It’s a huge summer of change at Tottenham, but given how poorly they did domestically last season, perhaps this isn’t the time for them to lose one of the best players in their history.
Enjoy this? Subscribe to our football newsletter to receive exclusive weekly content. You should also follow our social accounts over on X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
Tottenham’s Son Heung-min Dilemma: Cash in or Keep Club Legend for One More Year? Opta Analyst.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Tottenham’s Son Heung-min Dilemma: Cash in or Keep Club Legend for One More Year? )
Also on site :