Jermaine Jenas exclusive: Lay off Tottenham star Dele Alli

People need to get a grasp on reality before they start to question the abilities of Tottenham’s Dele Alli, writes BT Sport pundit Jermaine Jenas.

This is a young kid who has achieved so much in the game and the standards he has set are incredibly high, but you cannot expect a 21-year-old to produce those kind of displays week after week, season after season. It just doesn’t happen like that for a kid who is still making his way in the game.

In many way, Dele’s form has mirrored Tottenham’s this season; very good moments and some big disappointments, with the consistency both the team and one of their star players need to challenge for the title not there so far.

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He scored 22 goals last season and that was a fantastic record, but he to carry on producing displays of that quality this season was going to be tough and he has struggled a little bit at times.

Yet I would urge everyone who has been questioning this kid to remember that he is younger than his Spurs team-mate Harry Winks, who we view as a newcomer to the first team set-up and probably give a little more slack to if he has a bad game or two.

The perception is that Winks is having an amazing season and Dele is a little bit quiet, but he has scored seven goals so far and provided seven assists. They are good numbers and any English kid producing those kind of numbers in a top Premier League side should be pleased with his efforts, but it has been a bit of a struggle for him of late.

I watched him against Stoke last Sunday and you could see it wasn’t quite happening for him, he kept giving the ball away and you did worry that he was losing his way a little, but I like the fact that he kept fighting and got better as the game went on.

If he had hid, thought this isn’t my day and I need to take a back seat here, I would have hammered him on BT Sport because that is unacceptable, but he didn’t do that. He kept going in search of the ball, showed a real willingness to turn the match around for himself and it was very impressive from a young kid.

Eventually, he got the key pass off the game off, slid in Son Heung-min, Spurs went 2-0 up and the end result was that he had a massive impact on that game. That’s what he can do, even on a bad day, and I believe the hype around him is justified.

Can Dele be one of the best players in the world? I think he can get to that level, but players like David Silva, Kevin De Bruyne, even Mesut Ozil at Arsenal have been operating at the top of the game for many years now, so you expect them to perform more consistently that a kid like Dele.

Don’t worry about Dele Alli. We can all see that he is having a bit of a confidence wobble, probably his first since he went to Tottenham, but we all need to lay off him a little bit and let him develop at a natural pace.

Watch Manchester City v Spurs live on BT Sport 1 on Saturday 16th December from 5pm.

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