Tony Cascarino has questioned the attitude of Tottenham ace Dele Alli after his performance in the defeat to Arsenal at the weekend.
The 21-year-old is a mainstay in the starting XI and was one of several players who disappointed in a 2-0 away loss at the Emirates Stadium.
He was substituted off in the 75th minute after failing to have an impact in the final third and the attacking midfielder looks short of his usual standards.
Allí has scored seven goals in 14 games across all competitions this campaign, but the playmaker is struggling to have a big influence on matches so far.
Mauricio Pochettino will be hoping the England international can rediscover his top form, but the defeat to Arsenal in the Premier League meant their title bid became even less convincing.
Sky pundit Cascarino singled out Alli for his ineffective display and even suggested that his attitude was completely wrong in the north London derby.
“Dele Alli did a great impression of Mesut Ozil on a bad day in the north London derby on Saturday,” he wrote in the Times.
“He’s a very young man, so you have to cut him a bit of slack, but for whatever reason he looked totally uninterested and was on the fringe of the game for 70 minutes before being replaced.
“Footballers have bad games, that’s inveitable, but what’s worse than playing badly is looking like you don’t care.”
OPINION
Alli quite often wears his heart on his sleeve and the clash against Arsenal should have been the perfect platform for him to express himself. However, not for the first time this campaign he was relatively quiet in the game and he was even substituted off in the second-half. He has risen into a superstar during the past couple of seasons under Pochettino, but needs to start grabbing games by the scurf of the neck on the big occasion. Alli did exactly that on the European stage against Real Madrid, but seeing that sort of thing against top-six rivals in the Premier League has to be a key ambition.