Tottenham Hotspur are preparing to go into their first transfer window with Antonio Conte as manager, with the Italian expected to make tweaks to his squad.
Conte has been working with a group of players assembled by his two predecessors, Nuno Espirito Santo and Jose Mourinho, and has been linked with a number of January moves.
There have been suggestions he could look at former club Chelsea for potential signings, but Spurs may also need to offload some members of the current crop to make space for any new arrivals.
One of those linked with a mid-season exit is Dele Alli, and Conte's stance on the England international appears to be one of the areas where he and long-time rival Mourinho are on the same page.
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Read more: 4 potential destinations for Dele Alli as he looks set to leave Spurs
Former MK Dons midfielder Alli has featured sparingly for Spurs this season, only making one substitute appearance in the Premier League since Conte's appointment - although he has been a little more involved in Europe.
The 25-year-old also struggled for league minutes under Mourinho last term, having fallen foul of the Portuguese.
With Alli reportedly being allowed to leave in the new year, it appears Conte shares Mourinho's stance on the player's usefulness to this Spurs team.
Back in January, when Mourinho was still in the dugout at Tottenham, he responded to questions about Alli by saying "In every dressing room are unhappy players... Then you can have [an] unhappy professional and the unhappy professional is the one that is unhappy but feels that his duty is to work, work, work and work."
The previous month, the Portuguese manager had hit out at the midfielder after withdrawing him in the second half of a Carabao Cup win at Stoke.
"For me, a player that plays in that position is a player that has to link and has to create and not to create problems for his own team," Mourinho said.
"Of course in that situation there, an objective counter-attack could probably end with a goal or with an action and instead it leads to a counter-attack behind our defenders.
"Of course we were imbalanced because when you have possession you have full-backs out wide and another midfielder in a different line and they caught us in a counter-attack and they transformed the result of the game. That was totally in our hands, so yes I am upset."
While Alli has admitted he didn't blame anyone but himself for his struggles, Mourinho was criticised for his treatment of the player, whose last England appearance came in the UEFA Nations League in September 2019, a few months before Mourinho took over from Mauricio Pochettino.
It's understood that Dele will be allowed to leave north London in January, after a reunion with Pochettino at Paris Saint-Germain failed to materialise last season.
Alli's only two appearances under Conte have been a late substitute run-out in the victory over Leeds in the league and a start in the defeat to NS Mura in the Europa Conference League.
Having started the campaign in the line-up under Nuno Espirito Santo - even donning the captain's armband on occasion - it appears Conte shares Mourinho's stance on Alli's importance to the team, rather than the man he replaced.
