Dele Alli has been told to stop trying to impress Tottenham Hotspur boss Jose Mourinho and concentrate on playing for himself.
Things went from bad to worse for the 24-year-old Spurs midfielder on Thursday night.
Mourinho gave Alli a rare chance to impress in Tottenham’s first XI against Antwerp in the Europa League, but the Portuguese took him off at half-time.
The former MK Dons gem continues to look a totally different player to the one who set the Premier League alight under Mauricio Pochettino a few years ago.
In last night’s defeat in Belgium, Alli either majorly lacked ideas from midfield or didn’t have enough confidence to execute them, having also conceded possession on quite a few occasions.
You can tell that this is a player in a pretty big funk right now, and former Arsenal star Perry Groves has told talkSPORT that the England international must start doing his own thing on the pitch and not try to please his manager.
He said: “I felt a little bit sorry for him because he’s a player who’s just completely just shot of confidence. This is the first time that someone [a manager] seems like they’ve questioned him and said I don’t fancy you. And when you know that, you get tense. He wasn’t doing things naturally because you’re craving your manager’s approval. I would say to Dele Alli, forget about what he [Mourinho] thinks. Play for yourself.”
It’s an interesting piece of advice from Groves, but the question is, is he going to get another chance under Mourinho?
The Tottenham boss clearly doesn’t fancy him all that much, having left him out of quite a few squads already this season, and last night’s performance will do absolutely nothing in terms of getting further opportunities in the near future.
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