Alan Shearer has singled out Son Heung-min over his poor performance as Tottenham lost 2-1 to Aston Villa in their FA Cup fourth round clash.
Spurs carried on their poor recent form against the Villans with Unai Emery’s side racing into a lead inside a minute of the match at Villa Park on Sunday.
Jacob Ramsey scored the opener before Morgan Rogers got their second on 64 minutes with Mathys Tel’s first goal for Tottenham too little too late for Ange Postecoglou’s side.
Tottenham have won just one of their last eight games in the Premier League and sit 14th in the table, while they have exited both the FA Cup and Carabao Cup in the last week.
Son has been one of Tottenham’s best players for many years but even the South Korea international – who has six goals and seven assists this season – has struggled in recent weeks.
And Shearer was critical of the 32-year-old forward and his fellow experienced players with the Newcastle legend insisting they “didn’t put in a shift at all”.
Shearer said on The Rest is Football podcast: “It’s the experienced ones that you’re asking for a little bit more from.
“More from [Rodrigo] Bentancur, more from Dejan Kulusevski, more from Son the captain – he missed a sitter in the first-half.
“But you want them to step up a little bit more because out of these last two or three months I think the youngsters have shone more than anything and that’s a great credit to them but there’s a complete and utter lack of confidence and at times a lack of fight.
“I was expecting some reaction after Thursday’s game against Liverpool after they got fairly criticised. They didn’t have a shot at goal and didn’t put in a shift at all at Anfield.
“I was expecting them to come out in the first 10 or 15 minutes and give it a right good go, whereas it took till the second-half for them to do that and that would be worrying for me.”
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Fellow pundit Micah Richards reckons Son, like the rest of the Tottenham team, is short of confidence at the moment.
Richards added: “Son’s not really playing with the confidence we’ve seen of old, just taking so many touches.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘he’s surely not going to pass here’. Son of old would have took a touch and bent that into the corner.”
Shearer continued: “A Son full of confidence would have moved that one touch out his feet and shot or the little step over or whatever.
“There’s no way when he’s scoring goals and full of confidence that he’s even thinking of passing that.”
