Let’s start with the big picture statistics, namely the total successful actions which separates emotion from what actually occurred. Some might seek to brand this as a cruel metric, but in professional sports, nobody needs explanations, just facts.
So the old, ‘ah, but he did some amazing running off the ball’ is for the civilians – we need to know when he touched the ball if it was good, bad, or ugly.
Sonny really struggled at Craven Cottage in the narrow maelstrom of it all. 49% is too low; toss a coin territory, which was atypical for the South Korean, whose mean average is 56.8%. Too many of those pesky black crosses.
Yet Son is a class act, so please don’t mistake this for a post-match ‘yeah but’ pile-on, there was plenty of good.
One of these passes resulted in Harry Kane’s poorly directed header.
This move enabled Dele Alli’s flick which resulted in the own goal.
In conclusion, Son had a great game because of his quality absolutely shining through. Less than 50% of what he did paid off, and yet he supplied plenty of ‘show stealing’ moments.The perception of watching Sonny may well have been lots of bungled actions – but the truth was, that the boy was mustard when it counted.