The Tottenham player who barely touched the ball but made a huge impact against Arsenal

If ever a performance proved that stats don't tell the whole story then look no further than Son Heung-min's display against Arsenal on Sunday.

If you chose not to look at the scoreline or scorers of the North London Derby at the Emirates Stadium and instead dived straight into the statistics and headline data from the game then you might be forgiven for thinking that Spurs' South Korean star did not make much of an impact and for that you would be sorely mistaken.

For the stats showed that the visitors' captain touched the ball just 18 times during the encounter. Just 18 times. Nobody else that played the 78 minutes Son did of the game had that few touches of the ball. Brennan Johnson was the only other starting player from both sides who matched that total but he played 16 minutes less.

In fact, the player with the next lowest touches in the Spurs starting XI was James Maddison and he had more than double that with 43 touches of the ball. The other attacking Tottenham player, Dejan Kulusevski had 45.

Those numbers show the game plan for most of Spurs' team was to get on the ball and then for Son and Johnson to run and be picked out by their passes. It meant less involvement.

Son had just 17 successful action from 42 attempts, made no crosses, attempted no dribbles, won three of his seven duels, lost his one aerial one, made zero ball recoveries and lost the ball twice, once in his own half. But that only made Son's performance all the more special because he used such limited time on the ball with near maximum efficiency.

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Two of those 18