This article is part of Football FanCast’s The Chalkboard series, which provides a tactical insight into teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…
It has been a frustrating 2019/20 season to date for Tottenham Hotspur duo Dele Alli and Eric Dier, who were Spurs’ golden boys once upon a time.
On the chalkboard
The former made 28 Premier League starts when the north London outfit finished third in 2016, while he scored 22 goals and provided a further 13 assists in 50 appearances in all competitions the following campaign.
In the subsequent season, the England international netted 14 goals and added 17 assists in the same number of games, as links with Real Madrid began to surface.
Dier was similarly influential under the leadership of Mauricio Pochettino, making 51, 48 and 47 outings respectively in the campaigns detailed above.
However, the pair found themselves more out of favour under the Argentine last term, with Dier making 28 appearances and Alli 38, with both suffering from injury issues.
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The latter contributed seven goals and eight assists in those matches, showing the deteriorating impact he is making for Tottenham.
Despite being fully fit and available, Dier has been restricted to just 102 minutes of football since August with 90 minutes of that total coming in the Carabao Cup humiliation against Colchester United.
Alli is only 91 minutes better off than his teammate, and while he was suffering from injury at the beginning of the campaign, he has been an unused substitute in two of their previous three Premier League fixtures, being left out of the squad against Leicester City altogether in September.
That is an unthinkable decline for the 23-year-old, and Pochettino needs to find a way to get him and Dier back to where they were a few seasons ago.
So how does he do it?
Well, firstly the former Southampton boss needs to give Dier a formation he can be effective in, and the 4-4-2 diamond system could be the perfect one for both him and Alli to thrive in again.
Wide men Erik Lamela and Lucas Moura aren’t in brilliant goalscoring form this season, so Pochettino should play with a more narrow system that allows full-backs Danny Rose and Serge Aurier to thrive instead.
That would allow Dier to sit in front of the back four and cover the gaps they leave, with Harry Winks and Tanguy Ndombele given a little more attacking freedom ahead of the 25-year-old – the latter has already shown his goalscoring abilities with goals against Aston Villa and Southampton this season.
Alli can then sit in behind Harry Kane and Son Heung-min, as Tottenham look to the future without Christian Eriksen, who is continuing to reject every contract offer he is given by Daniel Levy, according to Marca.
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