Tottenham’s Dele Alli is a lot of things, but a threatening No. 9 is not one of them, which was clearly evident in his quiet performance against Morecambe FC.
Antonio Conte put heaps of faith in the Englishman, who was forced to play a wholly unfamiliar, uncustomary role up front with Bryan Gil. You can add uncomfortable the the list of adjectives. If there was any match in which this science experiment could work, you’d presume it would be against a lower league side of Morecambe’s inferior quality.
But you’d be wrong in that assumption. Dele didn’t trouble Morecambe’s makeshift rearguard at all in the first 45 minutes. Giovani Lo Celso, Bryan Gil and Tanguy Ndombele didn’t exactly make life easier for him, but you’d still expect a professional of Dele’s seasoned experience to adapt against such minnows of English football.
Morecambe even altered their backline recently. After conceding bundles of goals, Morecambe manager Stephen Robinson, who missed the match after testing positive for Covid-19, decided to make a change of personnel in his rearguard.
It paid off as his three centre backs, Anthony Dean O’Connor, Ryan McLaughlin, Jacob Bedeau, handled Dele, whose lack of decisive penetrating runs made life rather easy for the trio. Give credit to Conte for trying Dele up front, but don’t expect the Italian to make the same mistake twice.
Dele was too slow and static to make life difficult for Moreccambe’s rearguard. And the lack of chemistry with partner Gil, who was also playing out of position, was horrifyingly obvious. There wasn’t really any dynamic interchanging, though Gil did tried with a number of rangy runs.
Dele stayed in a more central position and attempted to, like Harry Kane does so effectively, drop deep to insert himself into play. That provided the opportunity for him to get on the ball a bit more, but dropping deep created a noticeable vacancy up front. Neither Ndombele or Lo Celso overlapped Dele to fill his vacated area.
Dele came close to scoring in the second half on a brilliantly executed deft flick at the near post. But that chance did not come from open play, instead occurring off a Tottenham corner.
Maybe with a bit more time playing together, Gil and Dele could create a slightly more formidable attacking partnership, but, based on the evidence on display yesterday, I wouldn’t count on it.