It’s heartening to see unexplainable declines happen to other clubs’ players.
Less so that it’s happening under our prospective new manager....
The complete capitulation of Delli Ali - what happened to him?
- Thread starter Fortitude
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Less so that it’s happening under our prospective new manager....
In 17/18 he wasn’t playing as a hanging forward, he dropped deeper and was good in that role.
15/16 was also an excellent breakout season. 10 goals 9 assists for a teenager coming through is really impressive.
He was a really good PL player, one of the biggest u21 attacking midfield talents out there too. Completely fallen off a cliff now.
I rated him pretty highly but felt he'd fallen off. Didn't realize it was 0 goals or assists bad last season though.
He’s been found out. Eriksen and Son made him look better than he really is.
He is just Jesse with a few more flicks.
He is just Jesse with a few more flicks.
Maybe he is the anonymous national team player with a Fortnite addiction? 
Wasnt he injured most of last season? But still has seen an overall decline, he was rated at one point as the best young up and coming player.
He hasnt been the same since Ashley Young asked him how many premier leagues hes won.
Was never really that good to begin with. Will never reach Lampard/Gerrard levels.
Always been bang average player in a good system. See also most Dortmund forwards.
It was this thread that did him in.
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/dele-alli-is-englands-best-young-midfielder.411356/
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/dele-alli-is-englands-best-young-midfielder.411356/
I always thought that the Lampard/Gerrard comparisons were daft. He was very good but never looked likely to reach that level of consistency.
He’s been out of sorts for a while now hasn’t he? Seems like it’s hard to notice him in games nowadays. Maybe it ties into the larger problems dwelling within the Spurs squad right now? Seems like there’s a few players who’ve declined.
He’s been out of sorts for a while now hasn’t he? Seems like it’s hard to notice him in games nowadays. Maybe it ties into the larger problems dwelling within the Spurs squad right now? Seems like there’s a few players who’ve declined.
Always been the case. He has terrible technical skills, not that quick, average passing, so so shot etc. He used to be good at playing like a second forward and score some tap ins or head some goals. He is basically a terrible version of Frank Lampard. Frank had atleast some technical ability and could ping some passes around.
In the right system, i think he'd be great.
Feels like a fair few revisionist replies or skewed opinions because of the nastiness inherent in the player - Delle Ali was being talked up as a considerable talent in his own right just a couple of seasons back who was expected to get to, and stay, in top tiers for his position(s). It's easy to say that wasn't the case now, due to how dire he has been, but a couple of years ago, anyone going in for him would have been expected to pay a premium that not only accounted for his then-current level of performance, but also his assumed trajectory and potential. Nobody can refute this without sounding biased against the player, unless they were saying these things and going against the grain in rating him back then, too.
If you do so happen to have posts from 2017 backing up what you're saying now that the player has nosedived, fair enough, but it's all too easy to pile on a player deemed thoroughly dislikable whilst he's at a low ebb and say he wasn't all that to begin with when he clearly was fairly ranked as one of the top players in his age bracket and position in 2017.
@Classical Mechanic : I don't think it's hyperbolic to say be has fallen off a cliff, or that he has completely capitulated - from the player he was to the player he is now is a steep decline, one you don't often see in those touted to go on to have a stellar career. In 2017, nobody would have batted an eye at the notion Delli Ali would be at an elite club by 2020, and there wouldn't be many takers on odds he'd be where he is right now unless his assumed hubris and arrogance was/is a thing and had/has predictably consumed him. He's anonymous and completely ineffective in games; it's not just that he doesn't score or assist, he also provides little of benefit for those around him and his technique as a whole is some way off what it was - if this is merely form and growing pains, he'd be due one hell of a spurt to get him back to where he was let alone have him progress beyond it. If his current level persists, and Pochettino remains at Spurs and is allowed to spend (lol), it won't be long before such a key position is occupied by a new suitor. Delli Ali's fall from grace will then be signified as complete with him demoted to substitute or rotational component, which is a hell of a drop off from being, rightly, one of the stars of the team as he once was.
If you do so happen to have posts from 2017 backing up what you're saying now that the player has nosedived, fair enough, but it's all too easy to pile on a player deemed thoroughly dislikable whilst he's at a low ebb and say he wasn't all that to begin with when he clearly was fairly ranked as one of the top players in his age bracket and position in 2017.
@Classical Mechanic : I don't think it's hyperbolic to say be has fallen off a cliff, or that he has completely capitulated - from the player he was to the player he is now is a steep decline, one you don't often see in those touted to go on to have a stellar career. In 2017, nobody would have batted an eye at the notion Delli Ali would be at an elite club by 2020, and there wouldn't be many takers on odds he'd be where he is right now unless his assumed hubris and arrogance was/is a thing and had/has predictably consumed him. He's anonymous and completely ineffective in games; it's not just that he doesn't score or assist, he also provides little of benefit for those around him and his technique as a whole is some way off what it was - if this is merely form and growing pains, he'd be due one hell of a spurt to get him back to where he was let alone have him progress beyond it. If his current level persists, and Pochettino remains at Spurs and is allowed to spend (lol), it won't be long before such a key position is occupied by a new suitor. Delli Ali's fall from grace will then be signified as complete with him demoted to substitute or rotational component, which is a hell of a drop off from being, rightly, one of the stars of the team as he once was.
I'd take him in a heartbeat. Although he is sort of playing like he's got the United bug recently.
He genuinely looked great though, even from the perspective of a club neutral and youth skeptic. He was pulling off individual moments of natural technical brilliance that few players ever could.
It's pretty clear that he just surrendered to the advantages and temptations of being a young man with heaps of money and status. His frequent Fortnite streaming mid-season was an early warning that he was wavering in his commitment and, sure enough, it looks like he didn't have the dedication to pull through and fully realise his natural gift. At the top levels of football (or elite sport in general), a couple of years of half-assing things during your key development years is enough to ensure you never reach your epigenetic upper bound.
The Dele saga has very little to do with the stereotype of the overhyped Englishman[1] and a whole lot to do with the stereotype of the genetically gifted kid who lacks the character to maximise what he's been blessed with, which is a completely universal story.
[1] The "overhyped Englishman" has been an unrealistic meme for a while now. Hype is more restrained than it ever used to be and is mostly confined to limited segments of the media and supporters of the players' own clubs (where it happens to a similar extent all over the world). We get a bad reputation for hype due to a conjunction of factors that are mostly out of our hands: we have a top-two domestic league (large absolute number of players relative to the small chances of success), our newspapers and forums etc. can be read by a lot of people but not vice versa (English being a global lingua franca), our infamous "red top" media has - at least historically - been prone to hyperbole, sensationalism and unfettered jingoism around football (see previous), any big country on the global stage attracts more attention and scrutiny in general (causing cognitive biases), and our national team's rather unfortunate record has offered an easy narrative that our players are just never actually any good irrespective of any objective fact (and if you perceive a player as bad, you're more likely to interpret any praise as overpraise). I often hear misconceptions of "English hype" used to justify modern arguments that players like Scholes, Gerrard and Rooney were never world class.
I could happily write a whole essay on the reductionist characterisation of the English public's apparent tendency to overrate English players (probably will at some point). But just look at what happened as soon as America (to whom some of the same factors, like an accessible media and global power, apply) got a half-decent player in Pulisic. He was/is overhyped beyond anyone in recent English history (as a ratio of perceived skill to actual skill anyway).
On a very related tangent, I already gave my opinion on Dele a week before this thread was made:
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He's a typical gobshite in my opinion..good attributes, had a good period but then became a prick. Happens a lot, kind of weeds out the "professional footballers" from the "kids got rich too young".
It’s the football “fans” these days that are really starting to ruin the sport for me. This thread is just a case and point. Fans want/expect so much, they’re like spoilt little rich kids with their toys.
Jesse Lingard's rich man.
He could score goals but other parts of his game never looked like they could become world class.
Good but got complacent?
that’s spot on Rashford and Jlingz
that’s spot on Rashford and Jlingz
I feel the same way. I tried excising the social aspect of football from watching the game completely but it quickly becomes extremely hollow when you don't have anyone to talk to about it or to share the big moments with. Football is just inextricably linked with socialising.
For me, the problem is how hopelessly reactionary the average modern fan is. Players, managers and teams oscillate between good and shit on a weekly basis - depending entirely on what they did in their last game - with scant middle ground. The average fan's memory stretches only as far back as the last match they saw -- maybe another two or three if they're a standard deviation above average. Even people who seem genuinely intelligent and articulate will refer to players who've carried their teams for years as "shit" and "overrated" after a few consecutive mediocre games.
It's not impossible to see someone on a club subreddit go from calling a player their team's best to calling for the same player to be benched or even sold within the space of a week. I just can't handle that shit. The short-termism, the statistical illiteracy, the groupthink, and the cognitive biases and errors all over the place have just filled me with contempt for football discussions. It's even worse when you're a club neutral because you can see how wrong everyone is: there's no safe haven to go and have your confirmation bias repeatedly activated.
Despite being a fundamentally partisan venue, Redcafe has no Reddit-esque voting system for manufacturing conformity while also being one of the only other active football forums with a reasonable spread of intelligent and diverse opinions -- all of which adds up to make it tolerable. Believe it or not, everything outside of here is even worse.
He’s someone who relied heavily on his mentality to make him an effective footballer.
He’s not the most effortlessly gifted footballer, his bottom level isn’t particularly great when he’s not absolutely at the races.. he’s abit gangly and awkward and doesn’t move about the pitch particularly well - opposite to Lingard tbh who actually flies across the pitch but has feck all end product.
Alli had a great feel for being in and around the box but what allowed that to take effect was this desire to have an impact on the game, once that desire has dissipated you’re not really left with that amazing a footballer because his movement generally outside of the movement to get into goalscoring positions is quite poor. He’s not someone who can playmake and naturally control a game of football so in essence if he isn’t scoring or making a nuisance of himself he becomes redundant as a footballer.
He was overhyped in the sense that people thought he could become a Gerrard - someone who can have a Roy of the rovers effect on a game but apart from that performance for England v Germany he’s never actually done that. Lampard was a better comparison but Frank was a total professional who knew his limitations and played to his strengths for his entire career with complete focus.. Alli is struggling to match that consistent level of intensity and discipline.
He needs to realise that ultimately he was a floating second striker/attacking mid hybrid with zero ability to run a game and only way he’s going to make it back to the top is re find that hunger to score goals and forget trying to get involved in running the game and thinking he is something he is not. Like Rashford his ego has grown and he’s lost a sense of what he actually is as a footballer and that explains his recent decline IMO. A limited footballer who was and can still be an exceptional goal getter from midfield but not an outstanding midfield talent who can control games of football at the highest level.
He’s not the most effortlessly gifted footballer, his bottom level isn’t particularly great when he’s not absolutely at the races.. he’s abit gangly and awkward and doesn’t move about the pitch particularly well - opposite to Lingard tbh who actually flies across the pitch but has feck all end product.
Alli had a great feel for being in and around the box but what allowed that to take effect was this desire to have an impact on the game, once that desire has dissipated you’re not really left with that amazing a footballer because his movement generally outside of the movement to get into goalscoring positions is quite poor. He’s not someone who can playmake and naturally control a game of football so in essence if he isn’t scoring or making a nuisance of himself he becomes redundant as a footballer.
He was overhyped in the sense that people thought he could become a Gerrard - someone who can have a Roy of the rovers effect on a game but apart from that performance for England v Germany he’s never actually done that. Lampard was a better comparison but Frank was a total professional who knew his limitations and played to his strengths for his entire career with complete focus.. Alli is struggling to match that consistent level of intensity and discipline.
He needs to realise that ultimately he was a floating second striker/attacking mid hybrid with zero ability to run a game and only way he’s going to make it back to the top is re find that hunger to score goals and forget trying to get involved in running the game and thinking he is something he is not. Like Rashford his ego has grown and he’s lost a sense of what he actually is as a footballer and that explains his recent decline IMO. A limited footballer who was and can still be an exceptional goal getter from midfield but not an outstanding midfield talent who can control games of football at the highest level.
Did people actually compare him to Gerrard and lampard?
He's the new David Platt. Has nothing in his all round game to compare to those two.
He's the new David Platt. Has nothing in his all round game to compare to those two.
He has fallen off the cliff quite considerably. But Tbf he can still turn it around. He's only 23 and barring some serious injuries, a Gascoigne-like collapse is preventable.
He needs to be in the right club with the right manager to bring out the best in him because he is a bit of a specialist in his own position. Attacking midfielders/second strikers like him are struggling to find their best position in modern football. Just look at James, Ozil, Goetze, Isco etc.
He needs to be in the right club with the right manager to bring out the best in him because he is a bit of a specialist in his own position. Attacking midfielders/second strikers like him are struggling to find their best position in modern football. Just look at James, Ozil, Goetze, Isco etc.
Mixed feelings, I have spoken to match going fans who are adamant that he's the man behind a man type of player, that the likes of Kane, Son etc get results on the back end of Allis influences and that they wasted many chances last season ruining his assists. They also highlighted many of his contributions in their UCL campaign. I'm sure only those who watch Spurs on a regular basis can provide insight.
Nevertheless Alli would still pretty much walk into our starting 11. Mind you if he's supposedly bad under Poch he might as well retire under Solskjaer.
Nevertheless Alli would still pretty much walk into our starting 11. Mind you if he's supposedly bad under Poch he might as well retire under Solskjaer.
Thread about Alli, moan about Solskjaer
fecking hell, we have 100s of dedicated threads for that.
Alli wasn't overhyped, he was very good when he joined Spurs and for 3 seasons his numbers were very good. He was playing closer to the goal than actual midfield role. Not sure what happened but he looks poor player now.
When he was playing well, his link up play, movement was very good. If he doesn't improve then he will be 3rd player who are on early decline. Rose, Dier, Alli.
When he was playing well, his link up play, movement was very good. If he doesn't improve then he will be 3rd player who are on early decline. Rose, Dier, Alli.
He's been injured a lot in the past 18 months hasn't he?
I disagree, he's had quite a few injuries in the past couple of seasons and Spurs's form has fallen off a cliff since about February last season as well. It seems harsh to judge him like this after just coming back from injury.
It's far too soon to write him off and the title of the thread is excessively dramatic.
I've always argued that people misunderstand him as a player on here full stop. His position is quite a specialised one and once the end product goes you're left wondering what exactly he does, similar to Thomas Muller. He's actually always played like this for England pretty much.
I disagree that he doesn't have huge natural technical ability. If anything, he had too much. And it was very raw technical ability: silky smooth skills without much of the brain needed to turn skill into productivity. I've watched him do a lot of street football-style and skills-oriented videos off the pitch and it's clear that he's gifted in that sense.
I think translating his natural ability to matchday football is the part he's had to work hard to pick up. And now that he isn't working as hard, he's struggling to carve out a role for himself. With his raw technical attributes and seemingly no default positional awareness or specialisation, he's grown into something of a luxury player.
As for the quoted part, I don't think he's the one who has to realise those things. I think he's been mismanaged to some extent (I don't rate Poch as a tactician at all -- exhibit A is the long diamond experiment, which only benefits Son and is so bad that even Sissoko has come out and publicly criticised it). Between Gareth and Poch, Dele's been asked to play a wide variety of roles for which he's neither adept nor suited.
Neither manager has ever solidified a long-term position (2+ seasons) for him with consistent tactics and that has contributed to making him the poorly defined player you see now. I don't think any of his coaches have ever been completely sure about what to do with him and I don't think he has the footballing brain to figure it out himself. Most likely at MK Dons it wasn't a problem (one they weren't equipped to solve anyway) because he was just a young kid showing technical ability far beyond that league, which would've been enough to allow him to play anywhere.
Poch seemed to know what to do with him for a while, when using him as a free-roaming SS, for example. But Poch messed around with his role a lot and now he can't even get back the player he had at the beginning. I'd probably put a lot of that down to Dele's apparent decline in interest in improving as a footballer. He'll get rusty yet retain his naturally strong fundamentals under the rust - as he has done - but without a lot of specific coaching and training (and, likely lacking, commitment to it), he isn't going to find a position in which to successfully apply those fundamentals. Not one he could develop to the world class level it once appeared he would anyway.
That's not wrong. It just hasn't been true for a long time. When Dele was on song, he was fantastic at providing that final ball for Kane etc. and they developed an almost telepathic connection. He was never a fantastic finisher to the extent of a two up top but could play a loose SS behind a main man very effectively.
I would say, though, that he was always a system-reliant player despite not being a neat system player himself: his success depended on everyone around him already doing their jobs properly. It's one reason that Spurs fans aren't really buzzing about his return (the hype for his return proportional to his perceived quality and importance was seriously muted). He wasn't going to be the difference maker and he just won't pull up trees in a dysfunctional team.
I wouldn't say that Kane was ever profligate enough to harm anyone's assist stats, let alone Dele's. Maybe the rest of the team wasted some (nobody bar recent Son has been close to Kane's finishing ability on a consistent basis) but for the last five years, it has generally been the case that if you're playing behind Kane, he's going to make your assist stats look good, like he has done for Eriksen.
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Had one injury-riddled poor season, followed by a bad start to the new season(9 games in)
Fallen off a cliff...
This place
Fallen off a cliff...
This place
So what? It's no less deserved. Plenty of teams have had easy runs in the past. For years we ran into peak Germany and Portugal.
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Dele Alli, I have a hard time feeling sorry for him. He has a punch-me face.
And if we ran into peak Germany and Portugal, a midfield of Alli and Lingard would likely have fallen short. Fair play to England, it’s just no evidence of the quality of that midfield which you implied it was.So what? It's no less deserved. Plenty of teams have had easy runs in the past. For years we ran into peak Germany and Portugal.
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Dele Alli, I have a hard time feeling sorry for him. He has a punch-me face.
I think the comparisons only where there because he was a midfielder who scored goals. Of course Lapmaprd and Gerrard did that too, but they had so much more to their game than just goals, something I have never really seen from Dele tbh. So yeah I agree the comparisons are lazy and daft.
Don't think he was ever really that good? Can't think of one outstanding attribute to his game, one of those jack of all trades but master of none type players.
Never said he doesn’t have technical ability it’s more his dynamism or lack there of which limits him as a player.
It’s abit like Pogba where they’re so gangly they’re limited in the way they can apply themselves on the pitch but Alli has it worse as I think Pogba is physically getting better he just can’t be arsed at United whereas I am struggling to see Alli suddenly become a midfielder who can actually participate in the midfield properly and help his side control a game.
His best bet is focusing on the attacking side of the game and become hungrier and sharper once again.. he’s definitely a very talented finisher and has a good nous and feel for in the box actions.
Teams don't always need to be full of world class players to win tournaments. Wigan won the FA cup, Greece won the Euros, sometimes being a good team is enough. I think England were a good team, there were just 3 teams better than them at the world cup. We shouldn't take down what they did, compared to where they were in the last tournament!
Quite limited player in my opinion. Gets well into finishing areas and is gritty but it's all based on his competitive mentality. You take that away and what's left is a bang average footballer.
I'd buy low on him if that's a possibility. He has a fantastic knack for getting into the box that the United attack is currently missing.
Injuries havent helped but I think it is simply down to two things - his confidence is completely shot (a bit like Rashford in your own team) and he has been played out of the position that he was brilliant in (that's on Poch).
The positive thing is that we know there is a very good player in there under the right circumstances but at the moment he is playing so poorly it is hard to see him getting enough minutes under his belt to get his fitness and sharpness back so it's probably not going to improve until Poch leaves.
The positive thing is that we know there is a very good player in there under the right circumstances but at the moment he is playing so poorly it is hard to see him getting enough minutes under his belt to get his fitness and sharpness back so it's probably not going to improve until Poch leaves.