Dele Alli sparking Tottenham’s forward momentum prior to West Brom visit

The midfielder has moved on from his altercation with Claudio Yacob at White Hart Lane last season with 10 goals in the league so far and a new-found maturity which is rubbing off on the rest of the Spurs squad

Dele Alli provided the wrong sort of punch when Tottenham Hotspur last faced West Bromwich Albion at White Hart Lane. In what was a pivotal Premier League encounter, the midfielder aimed an off-the-ball dig at Claudio Yacob, which earned him a retrospective ban for the final three matches of last season. It was a moment of hot-headedness on a night when Tottenham’s title challenge was seriously dented by the 1-1 draw.

On the eve of the rematch in north London, Alli was described by Mauricio Pochettino, the Tottenham manager, as a “killer”. It was for all the right reasons. Alli has brought a spark inside the penalty area in recent weeks and his return of seven goals from four league games has granted him man‑of‑the-moment status. “We’re talking a lot about Dele but it’s fair because he’s showing fantastic performances,” Pochettino said.

Related: Tottenham Hotspur v West Bromwich Albion: match preview

A big part of the latest discussion concerned how Pochettino has sought to harness Alli’s threat by getting him into the six-yard box as much as possible. The 20-year-old played like a second striker in the recent 2-0 home win over Chelsea, when he scored both of the goals, and it has been noticeable in other matches how he has been Tottenham’s most advanced player, at times even ahead of the striker Harry Kane.

Pochettino has come to consider his three-at-the-back system as increasingly viable and one of the byproducts of it has been to get Alli higher up the pitch, with greater licence to break into the area. Against Chelsea, Christian Eriksen sometimes dropped back to provide a third man in midfield, which gave Alli the platform to push up alongside Kane in what looked like a 3-5-2 formation.

Alli has scored 10 times in the league this season, matching his return in the competition from the whole of the previous campaign. He has also become the youngest English midfielder to reach 20 goals in the Premier League.

“When we use different formations, sometimes Dele is more into the box than Harry Kane or another very offensive player like Son [Heung-min],” Pochettino said. “For me, Dele is a killer, because he’s very aggressive when he runs forward. He’s desperate to go to the box, to get the ball and score. That is an unbelievable mentality, and it’s because he’s a very special player.

“He can play like an offensive midfielder, and he can play like a midfielder because he can run box-to-box. He can run 12.5km or 13km [in a game]. Am I trying to get him into the six-yard box more? Yes. You can see how he is. He’s not like Harry Kane, he cannot be our top scorer but he has goals.”

Maturity has been a theme for Tottenham of late – and it has certainly applied to Alli. Mousa Dembélé said that the team had “played like adults” against Chelsea, in terms of how they saw out the result, and Pochettino has demanded more streetwise game management against West Brom, who have routinely been a tough nut for Tottenham to crack. They have beaten them only once in seven meetings.

When Pochettino’s team secured an eye-catching 2-0 home win over Manchester City in October, their levels dropped thereafter and they failed to win in seven matches in all competitions. Pochettino said that lessons had to be learned from that. His team are once again in form, having won their past six games.

Alli has learned from the flashpoint with Yacob, although Pochettino remains keen for the tyro to keep his feisty streak. When such subject matter is on the agenda, it is possible to detect the glint in Pochettino’s eye; he made his name as an uncompromising defender, at a time when off‑the‑ball incidents were less likely to be scrutinised by the TV cameras. Not for the first time, Pochettino referenced Alli’s intelligence.

“Dele feels what happened last season [against Yacob] and he is more mature now, he has learnt a lot,” Pochettino said. “And that speaks very well about how clever he is. You try to advise and translate your experience, and make the players better but that is not only with Dele. I think Dele keeps that principle [of feistiness] and I like a player who is that way – not to be too naughty, but a little bit.”

While Alli thrives in front of goal, Pochettino admitted that Vincent Janssen was in need of a lift. The striker, who arrived from AZ Alkmaar for £17m last summer, has scored only three times for the club – all of them penalties. It has been a tough transition from the Eredivisie for the 22-year-old and when he got his chance in the starting XI after an injury to Kane in mid-September, there was the suspicion that it might have come too soon for him.

“Maybe it was too early,” Pochettino said. “But it’s part of the process. He’s still very young; he’s a kid. He’s in a moment now where he needs love and for us to help him. The way we can help him is to try to push him and maybe give him extra work to try to help him be fitter, to be sharp and to recover his good feelings.

“I think we expected maybe for him not to play too much and when Harry got injured, he was our main striker and he played a lot. He has come from a different country, a different league and he needs to adapt his qualities.

“We know that now he’s not in a good period. It’s true that after Aston Villa [in the FA Cup last Sunday] he felt that he was not at his best and when you receive that feeling, some criticism, it’s always bad for a youngster. But that’s football. He needs to use that to be more motivated to work and show that it was right that we signed him.”