Eric Dier believes that Dele Alli needs to “put in the work, the effort and the commitment” to force his way back into Jose Mourinho’s plans at Tottenham Hotspur. Dier believes that his close friend will be back in the team at some point and fight for his Spurs future.
Eric Dier said “Yeah, of course. Dele has the capacity, we all know his quality, we all know what he brings, he’s shown that in the past,” the centre-back said after the victory against Brighton. It’s really up to him to put in the work, the effort, the commitment and I’m sure he will do that. That’s who he is, he’s always had that drive. It’s up to him, it’s in his hands and it’s in all of our hands. Individually, we all have to perform, we’ve got a very big squad and we all have to perform at the highest level if we want to play. We’re happy with where we are, we could be happier. As you said, if you look at some games – the Newcastle game with the penalty, again, very difficult to understand! The Everton game wasn’t acceptable and then the West Ham game, the same, really frustrating to be 3-0 up and it was really important for us to get off the mark at home [against Brighton], get the win and obviously we’ve improved massively away from home which was really our downfall last season. It’s great to be up and running with a win at home and we’ll just look to keep working hard, keep pushing forward. It’s very early on, our motivation is clear. For us, we’re going into every game to try and win. We know that’s not possible but that’s our ambition. We’re going into every game, no matter the competition believing we can win. That’s a great feeling and it’s a great feeling to have. That’s the objective and the manager sets that tone from above. It’s very early on but we’re focusing game by game and trying to win every game we play. There’s not much more I can say because we’re really focused on ourselves and we’re focused on Thursday now, the Europa League game,” he said. The work with the manager has been great because you know where you stand every game and he wants to win it and the focus is completely on that. That’s his focus, no matter what the competition is. That’s always his focus and our focus. Anything other than that, is for others to discuss. I guess we’re just really focused in the moment. It’s been a very difficult for everyone and the circumstances around it. The short pre-season, people starting at different times but i think things will gradually will come back to normal again.”
The 24-year-old has been left out of five of Spurs’ seven Premier League matchday squads this season as he struggles to find a place ahead of many of the club’s multitude of attacking midfield options. Alli has lost his place in the England set-up as well and found himself removed at half-time with three other players in Tottenham’s 1-0 defeat at Royal Antwerp in the Europa League on Thursday night. It was only his third start of the season and he had also been taken off at half-time in the opening match of the season against Everton. Ahead of that first match, Dier had said he had been excited by what he had been seeing from the midfielder in pre-season and that the “old Dele” was back, a sentiment Mourinho echoed at that time. However, since that match against the Toffees it has all gone wrong from the player, while conversely Tottenham have lost just two of their 13 matches and sit third in the Premier League table.
