Conte ready to rest Son in bid to ‘change old habits’ at Tottenham

Antonio Conte believes it would be for the best if Tottenham could rotate Son Heung-min rather than have the superstar forward play in every match.

Son has made at least 40 appearances in all competitions in each of his seven full seasons at Spurs, while only in his first campaign in England did he start fewer than 30 matches.

This term, the South Korea attacker has started all seven games for his club, although he is yet to score and has supplied only a single assist.

With Richarlison signed in the close season, following the January arrival of Dejan Kulusevski, Conte appears to now have the requisite depth to leave Son out of his team given this sub-par form.

The Tottenham coach could do so at Sporting CP in the Champions League on Tuesday, although the postponement of the weekend’s game against Manchester City – due to the death of Queen Elizabeth II – has given his team more time to recover.

Attempting to fit Son, Richarlison, Kulusevski and Harry Kane into the same XI, Conte said: “The postponed game allows me to make a different decision.

“Against Man City, I would have played with certain players, but now I change things in my mind.”

However, pushed on the possibility of Son being left out at some stage, the coach replied: “I think when you try to build something important, with ambition and try to be competitive and win, you have to change old habits – otherwise you stay in balance and you don’t want to have ambition.

“For this reason, all the players have to accept that rotation is part of this aspect. We have four players [up front], and it’s very difficult right now to drop one.

“I have to take the best decision, sometimes for the players. Sometimes it’s better to come in for 20, 30 minutes for them.

“I’m here to change the habit. The habit was that the players were used to playing all the time. Big clubs have a big squad.

“At the moment, we don’t have a big squad, but we have just started this process.”