With the ongoing discussion amongst fans at Tottenham Hotspur when it comes to the form of England midfielder Dele Alli and his diminishing goal threat over the last few years, the player himself has previously spoken about rounding his game off and trying to offer more to the team – even if it comes at the expense of his goal and assist tally – but most fans it seems certainly don’t agree with his new found outlook.
With Spurs’ struggles so far in 2019, having Alli back to top form in the final third of the pitch would go a long way to helping us turn that form around and Graham Roberts was one of many to tip him to roar back this year after his earlier injuries – but it simply hasn’t happened.
Plenty would argue, in light of his earlier interview, that Dele isn’t even providing the team role he spoke about in his performances so far this year.
Sky Sports pundit Paul Merson addressed the topic in a recent column for the broadcaster and he feels that Alli has lost faith in his colleagues to deliver him the types of passes that he used to thrive on.
“I’ve said it for a long time, Dele Alli has to get back to the old Dele Alli and he was one of the best young attacking midfield prospects in Europe. He got in the box, made runs and he could score a goal. He was probably the nearest thing to Frank Lampard at one stage. If you’re a midfielder, no one likes chasing another midfielder when they haven’t got the ball and they get in the box and score a goal. That’s what he’s stopped doing. He might be thinking that when Moussa Sissoko has got the ball, is it worth me running? And that’s a problem.”
Merson went on to praise Harry Winks for his efforts, but stated he wasn’t the type of player to feed Alli in a way that gets the best out of him and obviously Christian Eriksen features in his talk – but Eriksen is hardly on top form himself with everything else seemingly going on with his potential future.
“I like Harry Winks but he’s not a 40-yard passer of the ball. The only one who is going to put it on a sixpence for you in the Tottenham team is Christian Eriksen and if you look back on Alli’s goals over the last few years, some of his goals have been from 40-yard passes and I think he’s lost confidence in the players on the ball. It’s horrible because he starts thinking ‘I’m not going to run here because I’m not going to be found’ so you don’t run and you’re the one who gets the blame and I think that’s the problem he’s got at the moment.”
It’s an interesting argument from Merson, but given the current feeling about the squad I don’t imagine there will be many fans who cut Alli that kind of slack.
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