Dele Alli ‘needs help’ amid ‘denial’ fears as Everton hope to move him on – Jason Burt
Dele Alli “needs help” rather than “vilification” in his current situation as he recovers from injury after his difficult loan at Besiktas, with Everton apparently hoping to “move him on” according to Jason Burt.
The former Tottenham and England star returned from Turkey for surgery amid a strange situation with manager Senol Gunes which the Telegraph writer terms becoming a “pawn in a power play” which caused “despair” for the 27-year-old and his representatives.
Everton are unlikely to pay the £10million due to Spurs for 20 games played, but widely reported images of him at a birthday gathering with an apparent laughing gas balloon has seen the coverage veer away from football once more.
Burt writes in The Telegraph: “It looks like Alli needs help. Not just with his physical rehabilitation. He does not appear to be in a good place and the bad choices seem symptomatic of someone not being happy with his life.
“It is certainly far more complicated than just a young man whose money, fame and success came too quickly – he signed a contract in excess of £100,000 a week in 2018 – and does not appear to care.
“The fear is that Alli is in denial. Motivation looks like being a problem and [Jose] Mourinho may well have been right: even those close to Alli says he does not always listen.
“But it also means that the best thing that can happen for him now is to be left alone with no more social media scrutiny, no more comment and, even, no more articles like this.”
Reason
Of course he shouldn’t be vilified, and the unrelenting spotlight is obviously a lot for anyone in the public eye to deal with, but it is probably impossible for a Premier League footballer to be spared any attention at all.
Rightly or wrongly, for a club in the sort of financial situation that Everton are, a player like Dele on the books on high wages is relevant.
But the scrutiny should be fair, and it often isn’t. For years in his early career he was hailed as the ideal young star who had risen from MK Dons and taken the Premier League by storm.
Yet he is hardly the first player to have burned so brightly at a young age and trailed off as they got older, and ever since he is anything but a uniquely problematic character yet he is always singled out as a bewildering singular case.
Has he made mistakes and not made the most of certain opportunities? Almost certainly, just like everyone else on the planet.
But he is far from alone in his form dipping from an extremely high level after injuries, or being paid over the odds at Everton, or struggling on loan in a new country, or being a footballer who drives a Rolls Royce, or wears clothes Glenn Hoddle doesn’t understand, or is pictured with laughing gas [Nick Sutton, Twitter].
From a practical point of view it doesn’t seem that the Toffees move has worked out but even negative elements are hardly unique Dele Alli faults so they shouldn’t be seen as such.