Son Heung-min’s seven goals in nine matches have helped Tottenham Hotspur to the top of the Premier League table. The South Korea star needs only two goals to draw level with the division’s top scorer, Erling Haaland, and three to match his own total from the whole of last season. This is a testament to Ange Postecoglou’s work in reviving Tottenham and reinvigorating his captain, whose 0.9 goals per 90mins this season have put him on track to record his best tally in the top flight.
How, then, has the Tottenham head coach managed to set Son on course for a record-breaking campaign?
The most striking and obvious difference between this season and last is that Tottenham are playing better collectively: they control games with and without possession, create more chances, and compete with an energy and attacking impetus that accentuates Son’s best qualities.
Postecoglou’s ethos and style of play appear to be responsible for this improvement. Tottenham play with the ball more, are slower and more thoughtful in possession, and share the attacking responsibilities across the XI, rather than encumbering the front three with the sole responsibility to create and finish chances on their own.
This style of play is reflected in Tottenham’s share of possession: it has risen to 60.1 per cent, the third-highest share in the league; last season they had an average of 50 per cent, the eighth-most in the division.
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With more touches and passes, Son is more regularly involved in possession sequences, particularly in the final third.
However, Postecoglou has tweaked Son’s role too. The South Korean is now the team’s striker and attacks more regularly through the middle, although he also contributes to possession in a more refined and focused manner.
For instance, rather than dropping deep to instigate attacks with long passes, Son stays higher upfield as his team-mates bring the ball to him.
Postecoglou’s brief requires his centre backs to stay fixed at the back and for two players to provide and hold width upfield. However, beyond that, the players are given the freedom to roam and interchange. They now take more touches all over the pitch compared to previous seasons, when their touches were more concentrated in and around their own penalty area.
Son has used this freedom as an opportunity to focus on playing further upfield and allowing his team-mates to do the deep combination play in the defensive and middle thirds.
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This role allows Son to enter the box more frequently. He is taking 3.31 shots per 90mins — the only other Premier League seasons when he took as many shots per 90mins were 2016-17 and 2018-19, under Mauricio Pochettino’s management.
That it was Pochettino who last extracted such a high volume of shots from him is no coincidence. Pochettino and Postecoglou share plenty of their tactical ideas, while Antonio Conte and José Mourinho, the former Spurs coaches, used Son in a more direct, focused manner — as an outlet for the team on the break.
While a slower and less-direct style could imply that Son and his team-mates would have fewer opportunities to counterattack and for the South Korean to use his pace, Son is still able to demonstrate those qualities, as Tottenham’s willingness to play out from the back encourages opponents to press and step forward, which opens spaces for him to run into.
The quality of chances Son is getting is broadly the same — his xG per shot (a measure of chance quality) has increased from 0.12 per 90mins last season to 0.13. However, as Tottenham are willing to build and sustain possession sequences, they are better positioned to probe and work chances compared to previous years.
The addition of James Maddison has eased the loss of Harry Kane, as the former Leicester City midfielder often operates in the same No 10 spaces as the England captain and links up well with Son. With this complementary style and personnel, Son has been able to get closer to goal — his average distance from goal when taking a shot this season is 15.9 yards and his average distance since the 2017-18 season is 17.3 yards.
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Amid these tactical and personnel changes by Postecoglou are also some more natural points of variation. Since Son’s debut in the Premier League, only Kane (+37.5) has over-performed his expected goals (xG) total by a larger degree. Like Kane, Son is one of those rare elite players who finishes chances at an above-average rate.
However, last season was one of Son’s rare fallow periods. But for a 30-minute hat-trick against Leicester, Son went without a goal in the 14 league matches from August to the new year that he featured in. That lull in finishing followed an outstanding run that peaked when he averaged 1.13 goals per 90mins over the previous 19-matches.
But last season, Son’s form declined sharply as Tottenham struggled to create chances for him, and his goalscoring touch deserted him in those few moments he was in on goal.
Now, though, he has rediscovered his finishing form, and both his expected goals and goals scored are trending upwards.
With just a little natural variance swinging back his way, and playing within a team that has been re-engineered to showcase his best qualities, Son is scaling new heights under Postecoglou.
