Tottenham: Dele Alli at crossroads with football and Spurs

Dele’s slow decline

To be fair, Dele Alli plays a highly active position in one of, if not the toughest football league in the world. To think he could consistently provide 20-plus goals and a dozen-plus assists might have been ambitious. So, when Dele’s 2017-18 season saw a decline in the times he hit the net, maybe it was to be expected. Although the lowest total of HIS career, nine goals in the league from a midfielder is solid and add in a further 11 assists and it is a solid season.

Dele had a further five goals and six assists across other competitions, as he again made 50 appearances. In those 50 appearances, his minutes began to drop, at nearly 3,800 on the season. At 14 goals and 17 assists in all competitions, it was a good season, just not quite to the level and standard he had set the year before. Dele also missed five games total that season, with three coming from a red card suspension in the Champions League, one a coach’s decision, and another his first hamstring injury.

It was that last issue, the hamstring injury where things really started to fall apart the last couple of years for Dele. The game from the previous year was clearly just an isolated incident having occurred early in the season. However, 2018-19 was different for Dele as he missed seven games across the Champions League and Premier League in September alone for a bum hamstring.

Dele tried to return in October, but was not near his previous level as he managed just four goals and two assists across all competitions from October until late January when his leg gave out again and he was out for more than two months for a muscle strain. With the hamstring being the first major injury of his career, maybe Dele came back too early, but only he knows that.

Regardless, between his two leg injuries and fracturing his hand, Dele missed 20 matches over the course of the season, playing in 38 of Spurs’ 58 games. At just south of 3,000 minutes, and injured most of the campaign, Spurs were probably lucky to get the seven goals and eight assists they did – all career lows.

The 2019-20 campaign really was not that much different for Dele, although he had some impactful goals, scoring the only goals in draws home against Watford and away at Everton before Mauricio Pochettino was sacked. At that point, Dele had already missed four games from injury or selection and sat on the bench for a further three.

Dele, and not his brother, did show up for a little while at the start of Jose Mourinho’s tenure as coach, scoring four and assisting three in Mourinho’s first seven league matches and adding another goal in his first Champions League game.

However, Dele managed only two goals and two assists after his Boxing Day goal against Brighton and missed five of the last six matches of the season with injury or by selection. With a total of nine goals and six assists in all competitions, the idea of a 20-goal, 12-assist season seems like a dream.