Pochettino keeping the faith as Alli seeks to spark his season into life
The omens are good for Spurs midfielder to hit form over festive period, discovers Sam Dean
For the second season in a row, Tottenham Hotspur face Burnley in their final game before Christmas. And for the second season in a row, Dele Alli approaches the match having not scored a league goal for two months.
The young midfielder’s struggles have been well documented this campaign. Much has been made of the off-field distraction of changing agents, for example, while the past few days have brought further scrutiny of his temper following a dreadful tackle on Kevin De Bruyne during last week’s defeat by Manchester City.
Eric Dier, Alli’s team-mate and close friend, has since felt compelled to make it clear that the 21-year-old is not a “malicious” player, but the questions over his temperament and discipline show no sign of disappearing.
And yet, in spite of all this, Alli has only to glance at the history of his brief Tottenham career to find some encouragement ahead of the festive schedule. It is surely not lost on the young midfielder that it has twice been at this precise point of the season that he has clicked into gear.
The contrast between Alli’s form before and after Tottenham’s final game before Christmas is dramatic. A year ago, he had not found the net in seven league games before Tottenham hosted Burnley on Dec 18. He had scored just four goals for his club in the first half of the season, and assisted only one.
Alli subsequently scored against Burnley, kick-starting a run of form in which he found the net six times in the next three games. He went on to score 14 goals in the second half of the season, at a rate of one goal every 130 minutes, compared to one goal every 303 minutes before that. There were also six assists.
The season before, in his first campaign as a Tottenham player, he had scored three goals in 11 starts, and again created just one for a team-mate. Once again, a goal in the final game before Christmas triggered a run of impressive form, as Alli went on to score seven in the second half of the season and assist a further eight.
It is a trend that has so far continued into this season, in which Alli has three goals in the Premier League (his last was against Liverpool in October) and three assists. It all prompts the question that whether, amid all the conjecture and theorising over the reasons for this dip, Alli is simply a slow starter.
“I cannot guess,” said Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino, who – publicly, at least – insists he is not overly concerned by Alli’s struggles. “For us, it’s normal,” he said. “He is 21, not 27. We need to be careful when we assess a player as young as him.”
There is, though, an acceptance that Tottenham and England need Alli to return to his productive best sooner rather than later. “For me, it’s so important now to translate to him the trust, to push him to try to improve, because he’s a massive talent,” Pochettino said. “And so important for England. In the end, it’s not only that he needs to perform for Tottenham, at the end of the season it’s the World Cup. Our job is to try to help him.”
Having previously seemed to hold a position as one of Pochettino’s undroppable attackers, Alli was relegated to the bench for the first Premier League game in more than a year when Tottenham hosted Brighton this month.
“We are going to help and we are going to take the best decision for him and for the team,” Pochettino said. “It’s not only to help him, it’s to help the team, too. It’s not to be selfish and say we need to do everything for him and not care about what happens to the team.”
Equally, however, there is “no doubt” that Alli will play, if fit, in the bigger games.
“Against Liverpool he was a key player and against Real Madrid he nearly scored a hat-trick,” Pochettino said. “It’s the same if you said to me, ‘why does Harry Kane play always?’ There is no doubt about that.”
A trip to Burnley would not usually rank alongside meetings with Liverpool and Real Madrid as one of Tottenham’s bigger games, but such is the form of Sean Dyche’s side that today’s fixture could be crucial in the battle for the top four. Burnley, in sixth, sit one point and one place above Pochettino’s side. “They are so tough,” he said. “They play simple but it’s difficult to play simple as well as they do. We need to be ready to fight.”
The hope will be that Alli does not take this call to arms too literally. A lack of fight has never been his problem. It is form that he needs, and it is form, the history books suggest, that may be just around the corner.
‘It’s important now to translate to him the trust, to push him to improve’