Son Heung-min: Spurs star's stats this season prove he's one of the PL's elite

Tottenham kept their Champions League qualification hopes alive in emphatic fashion on Thursday evening with a 3-0 win over Arsenal in the final North London derby of the season. Without the exploits of prolific forward Son Heung-min, though, Antonio Conte’s men would almost certainly have been out of top four contention long ago.

Prior to the crucial derby clash at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the stats gurus at Sky Sports produced a graphic showing just how valuable Son has been to the Spurs cause in the Premier League this season.

Highlighting seven key metrics for attacking players, Opta analysis showed Son leading the way in no less than four of the seven areas. The 29-year-old South Korean also ranked second in the other three categories.

You can check out the pre-match below, but it didn’t take Son long to add to his impressive numbers with a strong showing against Arsenal.

With Spurs already enjoying a 2-0 lead after a dominant first-half showing, Son helped himself to his 21st Premier League goal of the season to give Tottenham a three-goal advantage straight after the interval.

That strike puts him just one goal behind Liverpool’s Mo Salah in the race for the competition’s Golden Boot.

Son was visibly disappointed when he was withdrawn by Conte was 18 minutes remaining. The job was done from a Tottenham standpoint, but the player himself clearly believed he could have had more goals against an Arsenal side reduced to 10-men when Rob Holding was sent off for two bookable offences after barely half an hour.

As strike partner Harry Kane is the designated Spurs penalty-taker, none of Son’s Premier League tally this term has come from the spot, making him the leading scorer of non-penalty goals in the English