Tactical Profile – what is Dele Alli’s best position?
The Athletic’s Tom Worville recently contributed to an article on Dele Alli and examined where
the attacking midfielder plays best. Dele has been used in a variety of positions for
Tottenham Hotspur over his last five seasons, with varying degrees of success.
While an injury crisis has recently seen him deployed as a makeshift striker, he’s mostly
played as a central attacking midfielder. But Mauricio Pochettino also used him as an
inside left, while he has appeared too as a central midfielder, sometimes playing quite
deep.
Dele’s numbers make for interesting reading. As Worville points out, he started his Spurs
career on a hot streak of goals and assists which led to inflated expectations of what
he might consistently achieve.
Nonetheless, in terms of expected goals from Dele’s shots and from those chances he has
created for teammates, this season had been, to date, his most productive in north London.
Variability in numbers can have various reasons – from a hot streak, to changes in position,
to changes in manager and teammates. But what’s is that Alli is most effective, statistically,
when playing the 10 hole behind a striker.
Why is this?
How can Spurs construct a team around Dele that best suits his undoubted talents?
It’s worth looking at what Dele does well.
Reviewing his goals, it’s clear that while he is capable of acting as a penalty box predator
with strong physical presence and a deft touch, he’s at his most dangerous when running
on to through passes. His two goals at home against Bournemouth this season are good examples:
the first saw him run beyond the defensive line with Son Heung-Min and take a short pass
to finish, while the second was a direct, long pass from Alderweireld at the back.
In each, Dele had space in front of him to attack, where his pace and ability to carry
the ball puts defenders on the back foot.
This is why Dele is sometimes considered a second striker or even a ‘raumdeuter’:
one of his strongest abilities is finding pockets of space. He likes to feint, shifting
his body weight in one direction before taking off in the other, or look as if he is dropping
off with his back to goal, before spinning and accelerating into the channels between
defenders.
His role behind a striker helps with this. When he is playing off Harry Kane or Son Heung-min,
there is naturally a player ahead who can attract markers. This means that he is able
to explore the space between the line occupied by his more advanced teammate, and that of
the central midfield. Unless a team specifically sticks a man marker on Dele, his ability to
use that space makes him consistently dangerous – but with the provision that it’s easier
to find when other players are dragging markers away from him.
He can be dangerous playing in the inside left position too. As Worville also notes
in his piece, 94% of Dele’s passes are with his right foot, and so he has a natural tendency
to cut inside. When he played on the left of the attacking midfield three, it was regularly
outside Christian Eriksen, who often dropped off slightly to collect the ball from midfield,
or received it from the wide areas before looking to create. This left space in front
of him, centrally, into which Dele could run. Or he could attack the channel between the
full-back and centre-halve on the defensive team’s right-hand side, played in by passes
from Eriksen or deeper players.
Both of these approaches require his teammates to make space for Dele, either deliberately
in the case of a striker occupying markers, or almost accidentally by moving deeper to
collect possession. The same principle applies if Dele is on the left and the full back overlaps
– the opposition is taken away from the sort of zone Dele likes to attack by another
runner.
But the centre of the pitch, the 10 area, is the zone where it’s easiest for Dele
to locate space. It’s where there are more players around him capable of causing displacement
with their own movement.
This applies to Dele’s ability to assist as well. He is excellent at passes that bisect
defenders, especially at an angle that feeds a run in behind. Additionally, the angle of
the pass to meet his teammate means that space is created in a different zone, so it’s
very common to see Dele play such a pass and then immediately head off towards another
part of the pitch, sniffing out an area vacated by the opposition, whose attention has been
drawn by the man receiving the ball.
Dele can play to these strengths in any position. But if he plays as a striker, for instance,
it’s harder for him to find room. When Dele receives the ball with his back to a marker,
as happened a lot when he was asked to play as a stand-in number 9, he usually just takes
an easy option backwards or slightly wide. What he wants is to be able to then peel away
and find an unmarked zone, but playing as a 9 – against a man-marking centre-back
– prevents that him from doing that.
Indeed, Dele’s most effective moments playing as a 9 were when he was able to drop off,
deeper, find space, and play passes to runners making the kind of movements he himself would,
coming in from the right or left half space towards the top of the box.
It’s clear then, both from the stats and from watching Dele play, that the 10 role
suits him best. It affords him the greatest number of opportunities to attack space in
possession or find the time to pick passes and then move into a second striker position.
This means that Spurs need to ensure that he doesn’t get forced into playing as a
striker on his own again, bringing up the perennial issue of who to bring in to play
second fiddle to Harry Kane.
In addition, Spurs will benefit from having a better balance in their midfield double
pivot. If and when Tanguy Ndombele attains full fitness and becomes regular starter,
Spurs will have exactly the kind of press-resistant carrier who will attract opposition players,
making room for Dele.
Giovani Lo Celso is also highly technical and extremely dynamic, but Spurs should pair
one or the other of them with a proper screening midfielder, so that Ndombele or Lo Celso can
carry the ball without fear of being caught and leaving the team exposed.
With the right blend of strong cover, a press-resistant ball carrier, and a striker ahead of him,
Dele Alli can maintain or even improve his excellent form. It’s about finding the right
position for him, and ensuring that his teammates work hard to facilitate what he does best.