Tottenham Hotspur currently have a handful of players in their squad in their thirties.
One of those players is Son Heung-min, who has been at the club since 2015 when Spurs signed him from Bayer Leverkusen for a reported fee of around £22m.
During his time at the north London club, the attacker has made 354 appearances across all competitions prior to Saturday’s Premier League match against Leicester City, scoring 139 goals and delivering 77 assists in the process.
Even though the South Korean still has over two years left on his contract, Spurs have recently been linked in recent days with a player that we feel could be an ideal next version of Son in Barcelona’s Ansu Fati.
Having made 98 appearances for Barcelona across their senior and youth sides, prior to their La Liga match against Villarreal, the 20-year-old has scored 29 goals and provided 12 assists.
This shows how similar he is to Son in terms of being able to not only score but also assist goals from wide positions for his team.
The duo also have an identical rate of goals per shot (0.08) and an almost identical total of successful take-ons (13 vs 12).
Would you like to see Spurs sign Ansu Fati?
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Lauded by Barcelona manager, Xavi, for his “extraordinary” efforts in training, Fati has just one fewer goal contribution (6) in La Liga this season than Son (7), despite playing significantly fewer minutes than him.
To further highlight what sort of player he is, the young Spaniard has numerous Premier League stars included on a list of similar players to him such as Marcus Rashford, Harvey Barnes, Luis Diaz, Mohamed Salah, Phil Foden and Riyad Mahrez, according to FBref.
Despite appearing in all of Barcelona’s 31 games this season across all competitions, the winger has only 10 of them, which suggests that if a team like Spurs were to launch a move for Fati, the Spanish club may well be inclined to let him go.
Taking all of this into account, we feel that securing a deal for the Barcelona starlet would be a very exciting move for the Lilywhites to make and give them a ready-made next version and long-term replacement for Son.