Jose Mourinho would be negligent to simply avoid using Dele Alli any longer
By Sean Walsh
When Tottenham's shock appointment of Jose Mourinho as head coach was announced early on 20 November 2019, one of the winners was widely thought to be Dele Alli.
A hard working, big game player with a nasty streak perfect for the modern game? Under the management of a supposedly refreshed and reinvigorated Mourinho? Sign us up.
It all started well, too. Dele put in a man of the match performance vs. West Ham in Mourinho's first game in charge, before scoring four goals in his next three matches.
Dele would end the season with eight goals and four assists in 25 Premier League games, a reasonable return for a Spurs side so hopeless for most of the campaign, one in which he even had to play up front alone at times.
But he's only made four Premier League appearances so far this season, only starting on the first day of the season.
Dele's journey to the fringes of the Spurs squad has been a strange one. It's been so long since he was given half a look in that it's hard to even remember just how well or poorly he was playing, but he certainly didn't stick out as a player ripe for dropping.
In Mourinho's defence, Tottenham had been winning for much of the season after Dele dropped into his second string team. At the back end of 2020, Spurs were seen as genuine title contenders and there was a settled first XI. If it ain't broke, don't fix it - but now it is broken.
Spurs' reliance on Harry Kane and Son Heung-min can't be understated - only one team in the history of the Premier League have relied on the goals of two players more - but that is partly down to how Mourinho's moulded this team. It's a car only his front two can drive, while everyone else is in the back peddling along like the Flintstones' wagon. Unsurprisingly, Tottenham have run out of petrol and man-power, and now one of their drivers is out of action too.
If that was Mourinho's plan all along, to simply stretch the seemingly alien capabilities of his two best players to ludicrous lengths, then it's worked. But his challenge is evolving, and as head coach, it's his job to find solutions, to get the best out of his squad.
Mourinho wasn't fussed about the future of Tanguy Ndombele last summer, but chairman Daniel Levy saw a bigger asset in retaining the midfielder instead of flipping him a year after his arrival. Levy was reluctant to see Dele leave in January for similar reasons, and would you seriously doubt a player of his talent to simply be unable to even help this languid Spurs side? Of course you wouldn't.
Spurs are lacking creativity, imagination, and most importantly, goals. Wow, if only there were a proven player in Spurs' ranks who could at least provide a smidgen of those things. It really is as simple as that.
About a year or so ahead of schedule, Mourinho's tenure at Spurs has already turned into one of hypotheticals regarding the sacrifice for silverware. He stands a much better chance of moving away from that rhetoric and winning a trophy by reintegrating one of the best players in Tottenham's modern history. Failing to bring Dele back into the fold would be a criminal misuse of resources.