For Alli, this latest insult is The Greatest

FOR Dele Alli, being left out of Tottenham’s match-day squad against Sheffield United on Sunday, with Gedson Fernandes preferred on the bench, was the final insult.

Alli may be a lot of things but a bad pro isn’t one of them.

You may think he hasn’t kicked on, you may believe he’s lazy in training, you may believe he’s off to pastures new. But, if you think someone who has been such a serious player in Tottenham’s best team of a generation deserves the indignity of having someone who has done absolutely nothing for the club on the bench instead of him, then you need to give your head a wobble.

It’s almost unforgivable from Jose Mourinho.

Don’t get me wrong, the Spurs manager’s criticism of Alli isn’t without merit. I’ve spoken about Alli being an overgrown kid and I stand by that. Mourinho sees him every day in training and obviously sees something he doesn’t like.

But I’m yet to see something that Alli has done that would put him in the ‘treat him with utter disrespect’ category, and that’s what makes this treatment of him by Mourinho utterly disgraceful.

Usually, a manager would just say to a player, ‘Look, fella, you’re not my type, have a word with your agent and, if we can get so much money for you, you can go.’ But putting Fernandes (right) on the bench ahead of him was as close to a hostile act as you will get from a manager.

I can only sympathise with Alli because his position reminds me of when John Gregory got rid of me at

Aston Villa way back in 2000. He’d have me believe he did everything to make it work for me, like giving me the No.9 shirt of my hero Peter Withe after I’d initially worn No.11.

But then, in a meeting at the Birmingham Hyatt with me and my agent Paul Stretford, Villa manager Gregory essentially said, ‘I want you out, go and find another club.’

And then he had me training with the kids for a few months until Martin O’neill took me to Leicester. I was out in the cold and I can tell you it’s not nice. People will say, ‘Boo-hoo, you’re earning lots of money,’ but as a professional footballer there’s not a lot worse than training every day without a match at the end of it. This is the vindictiveness that I

often speak about when it comes to Mourinho, who has managed Real Madrid, Inter Milan, Manchester United and Chelsea among others.

He doesn’t feel the need to tell someone they need to do more and show them the way forward. He has to rub a player’s nose in it, time and again, wherever he goes.

While it’s working, he’ll have the supporters eating out of his hand. But, mark my words, treating Alli – a fundamentally good kid who is well liked at Spurs – like a dog will some day bite him on the backside.

Because, although players tend to be sheep in the face of a dictator like him, they never forget.

That’s why Mourinho had better keep winning, because the sand in his Spurs exit egg-timer is beginning to settle.

OUT IN THE COLD Dele Alli has gone from sitting on the bench to not even being in Jose’s squad