Are we allowed to say Dele was dire?

Sarah Winterburn

Daddy Redknapp claims he is “a better player” than Paul Pogba, while his son says he is a far more impressive 20-year-old than Steven Gerrard.  The Redknapps are particularly vocal fans of Dele Alli but they are not alone in feeding the hyperbole machine, now spinning so fast that it’s making us feel a tad nauseous.

Alli has been anointed the saviour of English football showmanship – taking over the mantle from the destined-to-disappoint Ross Barkley – and there is hardly a dissenting voice. Such is the received wisdom of Alli’s genius, it feels tantamount to treason to suggest that he has had a stinker. And my word, did he have a stinker against Bayer Leverkusen.

If we are allowed to point and laugh at a poor performance from the world’s most expensive player, then we must be allowed to do the same to a footballer some would put on a higher plinth. In Germany, his pass completion rate was an amateurish 58.6%, he was dispossessed six times, lost the ball a further three times with a poor touch and contributed zero successful tackles, though he did manage to commit four fouls. Aware from the desperate statistics, he was wasteful, casual and missed the target with Tottenham’s best chance of the match.

Alli was undoubtedly impressive for large swathes of last season but it’s doing him no favours to sweep an awful Euro 2016 under the carpet, erase a poor start to the season that meant his benching for England’s first qualifier was entirely justified or ignore poor performances against the high press of Liverpool and now Leverkusen.

 

He was sloppy and casual on England duty against both Malta and Slovenia and yet journalists asked him about being seen as the nation’s new ‘Entertainer’ and he seemingly embraced the moniker. A few days later he scored an equaliser against West Brom and he was quizzed about whether he could emulate the goalscoring exploits of Gerrard. Somebody needs to put the brakes on because this train is careering off the tracks.

The comparison with Pogba is particularly unhelpful. Every statistics ratings system is flawed but there are reasons why the supposedly underwhelming Frenchman is ranked 15th in a list of Premier League players this season and Alli is way down in 63rd. There are flaws to his game and they are largely the careless loss of possession and the relative rarity of him winning the ball back. Unfortunately for Alli, Opta do not collect statistics on nutmegs.

Alli is a very good footballer but he is not yet a great footballer. At 20, there is still plenty of time to make that transition and there is absolutely no shame in having off-days, especially when you have been playing non-stop football for the last 14 months.

But there should also be absolutely no shame in admitting that Alli is not yet the finished article, not in the same class as Pogba and not yet worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Gerrard. Let’s let him be the usually decent but occasionally dire Dele Alli for now.

 

Sarah Winterburn