Dele Alli believes that the competition for midfield places at Tottenham Hotspur can help them contend on all fronts this season, as he also lamented the lack of ruthlessness that underpinned the 2-1 Champions League loss to Monaco at Wembley on Wednesday.
Mauricio Pochettino started him in central midfield, alongside Eric Dier, which meant no place for the summer signing Victor Wanyama, but he moved Alli to his more favoured No10 role for the second-half, after the introduction of Mousa Dembélé for his first football of the season.
Christian Eriksen had begun as the No10 – the position that he has designs upon – and then there was Moussa Sissoko, the £30m transfer deadline day purchase from Newcastle United. Pochettino brought him on for Dier late on and he worked off the right.
With Tom Carroll, Josh Onomah and Harry Winks in reserve, it adds up to a strong set of options, which could be seen as something of a curse in terms of the difficulty of keeping everybody happy – when there is a clean bill of health, Pochettino will face difficult decisions each week.
“Nobody is taking any position for granted,” Alli said. “You need to have a big squad, it’s important when you’re in the Champions League, with the amount of games we’ve got.
“I’m happy to play anywhere in this team. It’s just a privilege to be a part of it and to be out there playing. When I was at MK Dons, I played all the games in centre midfield so it’s not like [the No8 role] is new to me.”
Dembélé’s return against Monaco was significant and welcome. He had missed Tottenham’s opening four Premier League games, as he completed his ban for gouging Diego Costa’s eye in the match at Chelsea towards the end of last season and his arrival coincided with the team enjoying greater control.
“Mousa is a fantastic player, there’s no doubt about that,” Alli said. “We’re excited to have him back, but Victor has done really well since he’s come in and Eric, as well, in centre midfield. With the amount of games we’ve got coming up, it’s important to have a lot of depth in the squad and it’s good that Mousa can come back and fight for his place in the team.”
Tottenham fought hard on Wednesday, particularly after going 2-0 down after 31 minutes, and they had 15 goal attempts to Monaco’s seven, but the most revealing detail was the one that said the visitors had scored with both their shots on target.
“We weren’t clinical enough,” Alli said. “We need to be a lot more clinical and finish off our chances. We need to make sure that we learn from our mistakes and start games quicker and brighter. The slow start killed us. We need to finish strongly, as well. We let ourselves down in the first half when we should have been better.
“We usually bounce back quite well from a defeat and we’ve got the next game now against Sunderland [on Sunday]. It’s important that we do pick ourselves up and learn from this. We’re definitely a confident side and we do expect to win games, no matter who is in front of us. We fancy ourselves against anyone.”
