David Pleat has revealed how he played a vital role in convincing Daniel Levy to sign Dele Alli for Tottenham.
The ex-Spurs manager, who also took on a caretaker role with the club three times between 1998 and 2004, suggested that he was instrumental in persuading the chairman that the £5million being asked for by MK Dons was a bargain for the England international.
Speaking on talkSPORT, Pleat said: “I saw a lot of him [Alli] and I was convinced that given the opportunity he would do well.
“Just before the deadline in January I was going to a game at Luton and the phone rang and it was Daniel Levy.
“Daniel said to me: ‘This boy Alli, we’re hearing that he’s going to talk to Villa and to Newcastle, what do you think?’.
“I said: ‘Chairman it’s a no-brainer. You can’t lose at £5 million.’
“Of course, he took my advice.”
“Daniel said: ‘We hear this boy will have talks with Villa and Newcastle.’”
“He said ‘they want £5m’, I told him that it’s a no brainier, you can’t lose.”
David Pleat tells John Motson how he made Daniel Levy sign Dele Alli ?? pic.twitter.com/Jr0spCpYrn
— talkSPORT (@talkSPORT) January 11, 2019
OPINION
Tottenham fans will be overjoyed that Levy took Pleat’s advice and snapped up Alli from underneath the noses of their Premier League rivals. The midfielder has been, without question, one of the biggest bargains in English football since the turn of the millennium, and he continues to get better and better with each passing season. Alli is close to being the complete midfielder, and has become an integral member of both his club and his country’s starting 11s. It’s difficult to put a price tag on him now, but you would assume that it would take many, many times the £5 million paid for him in 2015 to lure him away from London, if Spurs would part with him at all. It’s strange thinking about counterfactual footballing history, but who knows how he would have done at either Newcastle or Aston Villa, and whether or not those clubs would have had to endure the woes they have in recent times with a player of Alli’s quality dictating things in the middle of the park.