Dele Alli cuts a frustrated figure just as Tottenham need him to be firing
On the plus side, Tottenham have been here before. A 1-0 defeat to RB Leipzig in the Champions League conjured comforting parallels with last season’s iconic semi-final victory over Ajax.
Just as in April, a patched-up Spurs side struggled to match a fiercely energetic opponent at home and they seemingly need something special in Germany next month to reach the quarter-finals.
After this display, Toby Alderweireld was among the Spurs players to summon the spirit of Amsterdam but, in the absence of not one but two decisive forwards in Harry Kane and Heung-min Son, they are even less equipped for a miracle than nine months ago.
Lucas Moura wrote himself into Tottenham folklore in the dreamlike 3-2 win but an easily forgotten aspect of that night was the performance of Dele Alli, who assisted two of the Brazilian’s three goals.
It was the kind of decisive contribution Spurs need from Alli until Son or Kane return, but the 23-year-old’s audition to be the new leading man could hardly have been less inspiring last night.
Alli’s only memorable contribution was a furious reaction to being replaced just after the hour mark, flinging a water bottle and his right boot to the ground as he took his place on the bench.
“I think he was angry with his performance,” said Spurs manager Jose Mourinho. “Not with me. I think he understood why I took him off and the team improved.”
True, Spurs’s best spell came with the introductions of Erik Lamela and Tanguy Ndombele shortly after Timo Werner’s 58th-minute penalty, which proved the winner. The double change sparked a rally and Giovani Lo Celso and Lucas Moura came close to grabbing an undeserved equaliser.
Having complained at having “no strikers”, Mourinho surprisingly named two up front, with Alli and Lucas leading the line in a 4-4-2 system.
With Spurs sitting deep and hoping to bypass the ferocious Leipzig press with long balls, the pair cut increasingly frustrated figures as the first half wore on, with Alli particularly unable to hide his exasperation at chasing shadows.
Mourinho switched Alli and Steven Bergwijn shortly before half-time, but the England international found himself similarly unable to influence proceedings from the left-wing.
Experimenting with Alli as a makeshift No9 makes sense, given his eye for goal and impressive movement in the final third, but Mourinho refused to be drawn on whether it was a long-term solution to his chronic striker shortage.
“We are going to change systems and shapes according to the players we have available for the matches,” he said.
Not so long ago, Tottenham’s front four of Dele, Eriksen, Son and Kane was among the most exciting in Europe but, for now, Alli is the only one still standing.
Robbed of his most talented team-mates, played out of position and surely concerned about an ongoing FA investigation into his ill-judged video mocking the coronavirus outbreak, it is easy to sympathise with Alli.
Mourinho seemed unconcerned by his outburst, which at least shows the fires are still burning, and, us usual, Alli covered the most ground of any Spurs player before he was replaced.
The worry, however, is that rather than relishing the opportunity to be Tottenham’s new talisman, Alli is already letting the frustration of the team’s reduced circumstances get the better of him.
Alli has always worked best in tandem with Kane, whose absence has surely dented his hopes of returning to the England squad next month, and his link-up with Eriksen was key to many of Tottenham’s most notable victories under Mauricio Pochettino.
For now, though, Spurs need Alli to need forget the missing support cast and rise to the challenge of having a starring role. If he fails to do so, it is hard to feel positive about their season ahead.
If anyone looked like the new rallying point for Tottenham’s post-strikers period, it was Lo Celso. The midfielder was Spurs’s stand-out attacking force again, driving them forward with his raw blend of tenacity and technique and coming closest to an equaliser with a curling free-kick that Peter Gulacsi palmed onto a post.
“He is playing fantastic,” said Mourinho. “Very quiet boy, he’s more about work than speaking. I think he’s phenomenal.”
For Spurs’s sake, Mourinho needs to be applying the same adjectives to Alli after the second leg in Leipzig on March 10.
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