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.
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.
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.
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.