Has the underrated Mousa Dembele become... overrated?

With our attention spans dwindling with each passing scroll, the desire to consume cheap and easy 'content' has become insatiable.

Critical thought rarely permeates through online football discourse, with essays and theses making way for 'This or That', combined XIs and 'hot takes'. The Jonathan Wilsons of the world have been usurped, to an extent, by the easily seen Mark Goldbridges. Reactions rule. Nuance? Irrelevant.

We're surely aware that so much of the content posted online is pretty garbage, yet we're compelled to indulge. Why am I sitting here discussing Mousa Dembele's placement on the over- or underrated continuum? I've enjoyed him, man. Can't that just be that?

No, I wanted to weigh in. I've succumbed, folks. My aforementioned use of a viral Rio Ferdinand clip should've confirmed that already.

Kyle Walker: “Dembele was probably the best player I’ve ever seen play football.”

Kieran Trippier: “The GOAT (greatest of all time)? Dembele. You could say Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, but this guy, when I played with him at Tottenham, is the GOAT.”

Kevin Wimmer: “I always, always say it — the best player ever."

Mauricio Pochettino: “Without Mousa Dembele, we do not exist. Tottenham does not exist.”

Dembele's peers adored him. And you can't disagree with the professionals, right?! These were the folk who saw him day-to-day. Their lauding of Dembele arrived at a time when the average Joe perhaps wasn't aware of his brilliance.

At our best with Poch at the helm, the Belgian was the unflappable lynchpin in the middle of the park, but there was a sense, even among us, that Dembele had emerged from the mire to blossom into, according to his teammates, Tottenham's best. This was a midfielder who initially struggled to earn minutes over Ryan Mason and Nabil Bentaleb after the Argentinian manager arrived in 2014.

He'd develop something into majestic, but relentless talk in recent years of how underrated he was has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Belgian holds a special place in our hearts, with his rise coinciding with the most exciting period in the club's modern history. Dembele's significance to the most wonderous Poch-led Spurs teams can't be overlooked.

However, not once did he start more than 27 Premier League games in a single season. His dominant apex was simply too brief to be thrust into the realm of greatness, and talk of the Belgian making all-time North London Derby XIs is pretty blasphemous, as much as that's hard to admit. I've opted for boring old objectivity, I'm afraid.

Dembele was underappreciated by the masses at the time of his pomp, but has since been elevated into a far-too-lofty realm based on the assessments of his peers, which must be distorted by the magic he could produce daily on the training pitch, where small space maestros rule. Kevin De Bruyne, for example, said his compatriot would be the best five-a-side player in the world back in 2018.

De Bruyne's assertion was made when Dembele's stock was at an all-time high. While he was brilliant in 2016/17, his legacy is arguably defined by a four-game stretch in early 2018, when he shone in victories over Manchester United and Arsenal at Wembley, and produced some trademark sequences at Anfield. His best performance, though, was saved for Juventus in the first leg of what became a bitterly painful Champions League round of 16 tie.

I maintain that display to be one of the all-time great individual Spurs performances, especially in Europe. Juve wanted to bring him to Turin just a few months later.

But such showings were not commonplace. Dembele had a tendency to drift and for games to pass him by, but he was always capable of a standout sequence or two worthy of making the compilation videos, which have helped shape his legacy in the aftermath of his retirement.

He could do things that perhaps no one else could in the middle of the park, with his bulldozer-like physique working in contrast to his ballerina feet. This paradox merely added to Dembele's alluring mystique. A collective decline followed the Belgian's exit, and our inability to replace a peak Dembele (surely an impossible task!) has only elevated his status in our minds. Tanguy Ndombele could've been special, and Yves Bissouma has some similar traits, but there will never be another one like Mousa in N17.

I may have come across as harsh here, but I just think many of us have succumbed to the confirmation bias propagated by the highlight reels regurgitated by major social media accounts every year.

Dembele was an utterly unique footballer and unstoppable on his day. He'll remain one of my all-time Spurs favourites. But it was all too fleeting, with the limitations and inconsistencies too distinct. A specialist, but far from an all-rounder. He was a sub-par passer, an infrequent final third contributor and prone to defensive lapses.

It's not the midfielder's fault that he's been thrust into such a lofty realm by some, sparking outrage among rival supporters who have grown tired of the "underrated" talk. The oddly persistent debate surrounding Dembele's career has inevitably brought about bolder and wilder statements as our erroneous biases grew stronger

An opinion of relative neutrality on the Belgian simply won't sell, but I'll offer you one to conclude: Mousa Dembele was a very good footballer who captured the hearts and minds of any White Hart Lane or Wembley trooper fortunate enough to catch him in flow state.