Tottenham are finishing 2023 on a high, buoyant and upwardly mobile under Ange Postecoglou, and right in the mix for a top-four finish.

The first half of the year was largely bleak for Spurs supporters, as the club's uncomfortable union with Antonio Conte came to an end before interim bosses Cristian Stellini and Ryan Mason saw out a joyless 2022-23 campaign.

Assessing Spurs's calendar year as a whole is therefore a challenge, particularly when it comes to picking their best player over that period.

Plainly, Harry Kane was Spurs's standout player in the second half of last season but he left for Bayern Munich over the summer has not been part of Postecoglou's revolution.

Several members of last season's squad have excelled this season - Heung-min Son, Pedro Porro and Dejan Kulusevski, for example - but were below par in the first part of the year.

So, if there was an award for Spurs's player of the calendar year, should Kane be in with a shot?

When Spurs got worse, Kane got better

The case for Kane may be uncomfortable for Spurs fans but it is straightforward.

No other player in Tottenham's squad even remotely over-performed or enhanced their reputation as Conte's team unravelled in the second half of last season, while no player in their encouraging start to this season has been as good as Kane was from January to May.

The England captain scored 18 Spurs goals in 2023, only one fewer to date than Son, who has played in 19 more matches.

Son, admittedly, has a decent case but he has said himself he was a shadow of his best last season, largely due to playing with a hernia problem (as well as Conte's restricting tactics).

Kane, though, was outstanding and it is to his enormous credit that he never let his performances drop, even as the team collapsed around him.

It would have been understandable if he had taken time to recover from the disappointment of his role in England's World Cup quarter-final defeat by France in December or even reined it as the team declined and his thoughts turned to a summer move.

On the contrary, the worse Spurs got, the more Kane stepped up. He scored 12 goals in the final 12 games of the season, which included five defeats and draws with struggling Southampton and Everton. He even found the net in the 6-1 humiliation at Newcastle.

Kane leaving Spurs should not distract from the fact that over the course of 2023, he was still the club's outstanding performer, even in playing half the games.

Dan Kilpatrick

Son has answered Spurs call in their hour of need

The basis for the counter-argument lies in that Kane played just five months of the calendar year in north London and so to qualify as Tottenham’s best player in 2023 on the strength of that period alone, it ought really to have contained something of more lasting substance.

As brilliant as Kane was in that spell - the details are outlined above - it was not enough to fire Spurs into Europe, nor cap his phenomenal legacy with the one thing it still lacks: a trophy. You could probably make a stronger case, for instance, for Declan Rice being West Ham’s player of 2023 given he signed off by leading the club to European glory.

Of course, you must then nominate an alternative and by the same logic, I have made the host of newcomers to flourish since arriving this summer - Guglielmo Vicario, James Maddison and Destiny Udogie to name a few - ineligible. But in Son there is a player whose excellence spanned both campaigns.

True, last term in its entirety was probably the Korean’s most disappointing in a Tottenham shirt, but his form did pick up markedly following the World Cup, with nine of his 14 goals in all competitions coming after the turn of the year.

Add another 10 (as well as four assists) since the start of the new season and the forward is only one strike from reaching 20 goals in 2023, with three matches to come before the year is out.

Most important of all, though, is the role Son has played in allowing Spurs to move on from Kane so swiftly, installed as both spearhead and captain of a side that, under Postecoglou, looks firmly on course for a European return - and perhaps trophy-hunting in years to come.

Malik Ouzia