Dean Jones has claimed on the Chasing Green Arrows YouTube channel that Antonio Conte knew exactly what he was doing by dropping Tottenham Hotspur’s Son Heung-min on Saturday.
Conte made the bold decision to drop last season’s Premier League top goalscorer Son in favour of Dejan Kulusevski as a result of the South Korean international going through a tough run of form with zero goals across all competitions.
It certainly worked though as Son came off the bench to net a 13-minute hat trick which settled the game and helped Spurs run out very comfortable 6-2 victors and remain just one point off the top of the table.
Jones believes that Conte knew exactly what he was doing when it came to dropping Son and making him frustrated, something the attacker admitted to post-match.
(30:50) “What that decision did, it made Son feel inadequate for the first time he’s been made to feel like that in a long, long time, if ever in his career and he didn’t like it.
Should Son be dropped again by Conte?
Yes!
No!
“Conte knew that, Conte knew what he was doing. There are two sort of superstar players in that Tottenham team, Son and Kane, and that’s going to remain the case, he just needed him to rediscover a bit of that drive because he’s probably been a little bit put out by the arrival of Kulusevski and Richarlison trying to take his shirt away from him, nobody likes anyone trying to take their job off them.”
TIF Thoughts on Son’s current form…
It has been a surprising start to the season for Son having just three goals to his name thus far after taking the league by storm and running Mohamed Salah all the way in terms of the race for the golden boot award.
He clearly isn’t undroppable, however, with Conte showing his ruthless side by not selecting the winger for a starting berth against Leicester City, but the Italian manager will be hoping that was the kick he needed to get his season up and running.