Why we can't say Son Heung-min is 'finished' just yet | OneFootball

Everything seems to be going wrong this season for Tottenham, and not even superstar Son Heung-min is absolved from a good old fashioned dose of Internet criticism amidst this tragically awful 2024/25 campaign for Spurs. The 32-year-old Premier League icon has been subjected to the typical insults reserved for underperforming veterans, such as the ubiquitous "finished" and the "get ready for Saudi Arabia, buddy" play on an old NBA meme.

Funnily enough, Son has still been Tottenham's best offensive player from a statistical perspective despite his poor season. Son has scored 7 goals with 9 assists, 1.8 key passes per game, and 2.0 combined fouls drawn and dribbles completed per match. Those are obviously below the standard he has set in his career, but they are still pretty decent numbers compared to the average Premier League winger.

And when you stack Son up with his teammates, he looks better. Son is first on the team in assists and second in key passes. Only James Maddison has more goals and only two players have more dribbles completed per game.

Son Heung-min deserves some criticism

At the same time, the criticisms of Son are valid. You'd expect him to be leading the team in every major statistical attacking category, especially when this particular team is legitimately one of the worst in the Premier League table. So the fact that Son isn't leading the way is concerning. He is severely underperforming, particularly recently. Son actually had a decent start to the season, as Tottenham did, and he has fallen off sharply to match his team's performances instead of helping elevate Spurs.

But while I do agree that Son has been a major disappointment in the 2024/25 season, I'm not sure I am willing to sit here and say that he is a fully washed player and needs to be shipped off to Saudi Arabia. That's a pretty callous way to treat a club legend, which, unfortunately, has become the standard in today's soulless game - just chop up your guys like the horse from Animal Farm and sell them for several million to the Saudi Arabian government.

I have a feeling that Tottenham wouldn't say no if they got a crazy offer for Son from Saudi, and there are apparently two Saudi Pro League clubs willing to spend 50 million euros to sign the South Korean legend. So yeah, Daniel Levy, of all people, probably isn't going to turn that down with Son 32 and coming off a subpar season.

Tottenham is worse as a team than Son is as a player

But this piece isn't about what Levy will or should do. It's about Son as a player. And having learned something from the 2022/23 season in which Son struggled amidst a poor overall season from Tottenham before bouncing back in 2023/24 when Spurs were back in the Champions League race, I think Son's decline in statistical output and overall disappointing play is more down to Tottenham stinking it up than anything else.

Maybe Son is declining, and since he's relied more on explosiveness than technical brilliance over the years, it's not far-fetched to think that his decline would be around the age of 32. That said, Son has taken care of his body and showed no signs of significantly slowing down in 2023/24, so it's less likely he's hit a wall in 2025 and, again, more likely that he's suffering because his team - and coach, mostly - is bad.

We can't declare Son "finished" as a player until we see how he performs next season if Tottenham have a new manager and a team that is performing better. Otherwise, I am a subscriber to the belief that you can't make sweeping generalizations about a player if there is a broader picture, alternative explanation. Son isn't washed until he is definitively performing below the standard of the rest of his teammates, and, right now, even at his worst, I still think he's the best player on Spurs.