Heung-min Son deserves Player of the Year over Mohamed Salah

[AllSeeingEye]

EA SPORTS Player of the Season shortlist 2021/22

See the eight standout performers nominated for the 2021/22 award

www.premierleague.com

Get voting

 

[Neon_Knight_]

He's top goal scorer and top in the assists with 1/2 games to go. He is POTY, simple.

Played amazing for half the season, then failed to produce form anywhere close to that during the half the season where trophies are won. If he doesn't put in some big, title-winning performances this month, it would seem rather farcical for him to win POTY.

It has already been established in this thread that getting the most goals and most assists (as Kane did last season) does not guarantee someone POTY.

I'm not convinced that Son deserves POTY either. However, it's worth noting that he has outperformed Salah on numerous key stats that are possibly more insightful to a player's individual performances than pure goal & assist tallies:
Son has exceeded his xG by 6.96, while Salah is 1.2 goals below his xG (i.e. an average player would have scored far fewer goals than Son, but more than Salah, given the same chances).
Son has missed fewer "big chances" (13 compared to 17), despite scoring fewer goals.
Son's assists are 0.61 below his xA, while Salah's assists are 3.21 above his xA (i.e. quality of finishing from teammates skews the assist tallies in favour of Salah).
Son has created more chances than Salah (60 compared to 50), despite getting fewer assists.
Son has superior pass completion (87% compared to 80%).