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I like Dele. I want him to get back to his heights. I don't blame him for the goal at all.
However, last night's flick is a prime example of what he needs to change about his game. I would never describe myself as having a football brain but even I know that Lucas was the ball Jose would want Dele to play. He killed a promising attack with the incorrect flair choice.
How anyone can say they would rather see players risk a flick than take the easier option when the easier option pretty much guarantees a goal scoring opportunity is beyond me
However, last night's flick is a prime example of what he needs to change about his game. I would never describe myself as having a football brain but even I know that Lucas was the ball Jose would want Dele to play. He killed a promising attack with the incorrect flair choice.
How anyone can say they would rather see players risk a flick than take the easier option when the easier option pretty much guarantees a goal scoring opportunity is beyond me
Fuck sake. I’m going to be on here for ages this morning. Five pages on Dele because he lost possession of the ball. Can only imagine how many pages there are on everyone else who didn’t have the perfect pass percentage. This could take a while.
Playing a ball to Lucas doesn’t come close to being a goal scoring opportunity.
Leeds have championship players, the squad cost approx £35m to put together. That's what makes them and their approach to football so refreshing. It's why people enjoy watching them play. It's why they take the plaudits.
Stop making up how you think I would react if we played like Leeds when I've just said: "I wish we played liked Leeds". That means I would prefer to play that way than the way we play.
Jose wouldn't have us play like Leeds, that's an impossibility, it's not my expectation of Jose, I never alluded to the fact that this could happen, so why are you entertaining that notion?
No, I don't like watching this team play football. It's not that far fetched to comprehend.
Personally I couldn't give a rat's cock about Dele.
If he can get his head down and turn it round (which seems unlikely) then great.
If he can't then ciao, thanks for the great goals, all the best.
If he can get his head down and turn it round (which seems unlikely) then great.
If he can't then ciao, thanks for the great goals, all the best.
He was open as opposed to a marked Son, let's put it that way then lol
What seaosn did Kane leave? I must have missed that one.
You’ve been around here long enough to know that’s not how this works.
PICK A FUCKING SIDE!
And once picked, never, ever deviate from the side you picked. And whilst on that side, the side has to be defended using the most hyperbolic language possible. Never stray into the middle ground. Rookie error.
Dele is either the worst player in the world ever ever ever, or the bastard love child of Pele and Messi. Pick one.
It's one moment but basically a snapshot of why Dele has been poor the last few years and now finds himself a fringe player.
Well done Mourinho - you've got your siege mentality....against your own fans
Mourinho won’t comment on individuals – unless it’s Dele Alli
Sometimes Jose Mourinho speaks in riddles, sometimes he tells it straight. There was no doubting what he thought of Dele Alli’s role in Stoke City’s equaliser in Wednesday evening’s League Cup quarter-final.
Mourinho was furious with Dele’s attempted flick inside the Stoke half when Spurs were 1-0 up. That lost Spurs the ball, Stoke sent it forward, setting up the counter-attack which saw Jordan Thompson convert Jacob Brown’s cross to draw it level. He told Dele what he thought at the time and hooked him soon after. And then in the post-match press conference, Mourinho told the world how he really felt.
“For me, a player that plays in that position is a player that has to link, and has to create,” Mourinho said. “And not to create problems for his own team.
“In that situation there, an objective counter-attack would probably end with a goal or with an action. It ended with a counter-attack, behind our defenders, of course we were imbalanced because when you are in possession you have the full-backs wide, you have one midfielder in a different line. They caught us in the counter-attack and they transformed the result of the game, that was totally in our hands. So yes, I was upset.“
Mourinho has generally been gentle with his players in public recently, even after the defeats by Liverpool and Leicester City last week. He defended Steven Bergwijn after his miss at Anfield by saying, “In here, we lose, we win, we draw all together”. Nor did Mourinho go too hard on Serge Aurier after he gifted that needless penalty away last Sunday, a bad mistake, but not one that earned him the full Mourinho treatment in public.
To find an example where Mourinho was this critical, you have to go back to October, when he was not happy with the Europa League performance when they lost badly at Antwerp. He said that his “future choices are going to be very easy” given how the fringe players did. But that night, Mourinho was given the chance to criticise Dele in particular and he turned it down, insisting he did “not want to analyse individually”. But this time he was happy enough to try his hand at some individual analysis.
The frustrating thing for Dele is that up until that point he had played well. This was only his fifth start of the season, and since the opening-day defeat by Everton, the other three have all been in the Europa League. But he buzzed around well, providing more dangerous movement around and beyond Harry Kane than Gareth Bale or Lucas Moura did. He could have scored late in the first half, running onto Kane’s through ball but shooting straight at Andy Lonergan, and soon after had a good 20-yard effort fly just wide.
But all those good moments will now be weighed against this one bad one when it comes to Dele’s future chances of getting into the team. When asked afterwards which of his players took their chance against Stoke City, Mourinho said “some yes, some no”, without going into more details. “The most important thing for me is not the individual performance, it is the collective performance and the result. We always say the team above individualities and the team won.”
Obviously the win was important in itself, setting up a cup semi-final with Brentford next month and a chance for the first trophy since Juande Ramos was Tottenham manager. But the fact is that the individual performance of these fringe players on nights like this is important, whether Mourinho wants to talk about it or not. Tottenham have plenty of games coming up. Wolves, Fulham and Leeds United in the league within seven days, an FA Cup trip to Marine, league games with Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea not too far away, before the Europa League resumes when Spurs face Wolfsberger of Austria in the last 32.
And one thing that has been very clear from watching Spurs in the last week or so is that they cannot rely on Kane and Son Heung-min to do everything for them. (Even though here they needed Kane to play all 90 minutes, he put in another big shift, slamming in the goal that ended the game at 3-1 and still running the channels and chasing down opponents in the final minute.)
But for the sake of Kane and Son’s legs, Spurs need more from the support cast. Mourinho was not happy with Dele afterwards, and Bale’s evening did not end well either. He was the man who put Spurs ahead, meeting Harry Winks’ cross with a clever header to make it 1-0 but he did not convince away from that, still looking rusty at times, and at half-time he told Mourinho that he felt a problem in his calf and could not continue. More than two months after Bale’s second debut he has not managed a strong run of games and it may be a while until we see that.
Moura did not have his best game either but it feels as if he has more credit in the bank with Mourinho right now than Bale or Dele do, having already started 11 games for Spurs this season and contributed five goals. He came off at the same time Dele did, but you would expect to see Lucas again in a Spurs shirt before you see Dele.
Then there was Winks, frustrated by his lack of chances so far this season, but diligent and effective again here. His incisive cross from deep made Bale’s opening goal, and he gave Spurs stability and control in midfield throughout. So much so that Sky Sports named him man of the match, and Mourinho afterwards commented on Instagram that the award was “deserved”. Sometimes it is about the individual performance, it just depends on the individual.
Mourinho is well out of order.
This is how he fell out with his own players in the past.
This is how he fell out with his own players in the past.
Great analysis from The Atheltic as usual.
This is definitely very unfair on Alli. I think he tries to take risks and do moves that aren't 'pragmatic' but unpredictable.
Sometimes he gets the balance wrong, and there's no doubt that flick yesterday was brainless. But surely Jose should work with him to try and analyse his performances so he can learn when to take risks?
Anyway with Poch coming in at PSG, looks like he's headed there. Good luck to him. Will be given a chance for sure behind Mbappe and Neymar.
There, that's better
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