Glenn Hoddle believes that Tottenham ace Dele Alli struggled to make a serious impact during the victory over Apoel Nicosia on Wednesday night.
The attacking midfielder was named in a much-changed Spurs side that ended up picking up a comfortable 3-0 win over the Cypriot top-flight club.
He has been criticised heavily this campaign for his displays and was once again unable to make the difference in midweek, before being substituted off in the closing stages to allow younger Kazaiah Sterling to enter the match.
Fernando Llorente, Heung-Min Son and Georges-Kevin N’Koudou did make a serious impact with their goals to show Mauricio Pochettino what they can do.
Spurs legend Hoddle confessed it was difficult to assess the players’ performance against a weak Apoel side, but was critical of how Alli didn’t make much of a difference going forward.
“This was a difficult game to judge a player on,” Hoddle said on BT Sport’s tv coverage of Spurs v Apoel.
“Dele Alli has had better games, he didn’t affect the game much. He had lots of time on the ball and it was difficult to judge him.
“For him he didn’t get in the box like he normally does, he was more playing deeper. A decent performance but very hard to judge any player.”
OPINION
There is certainly a lot of pressure surrounding Alli right now and he could have done with a big performance against Apoel, but in truth was invisible for the most part and missed a big opportunity. The 21-year-old now has such big expectancy on his shoulders and is reaching unfamiliar territory in a Spurs shirt as he begins to take some stern criticism. He needs to bounce back quickly to prove he is a top player or there is a risk he could be axed from the starting XI moving forward. Spurs turn their attention back on the Premier League at the weekend against Stoke and he should target that as a big game.