Today I'm going back just 4 years to 2017 and Tottenham's home game against Liverpool played at Wembley Stadium because White Hart Lane was under reconstruction.
The programme cover star is, of course, Dele Alli (full name Bamidele Jermaine Alli) or, as he now seems to prefer to be known "Dele". Dele prefers not to use the name Alli as he feels no connection with the Alli family name of his father. By all accounts he had a challenging childhood with his Nigerian father leaving for the United States a week after he was born and having a mother with alcohol problems. Despite all the challenges however he broke into the MK Dons first team in 2012 as a 16 year old. A little over two years later he signed for Spurs in a five and a half year deal for £5 Million and was immediately loaned back to MK Dons for the rest of the season. In all he made 88 appearances for MK Dons scoring 24 goals. He made his debut for Spurs at the beginning of the 2015/16 and has made 262 appearances for the club scoring 67 goals. Spurs fans appear to adore Alli and celebrate him with their "We've got Alli" song. I'm not such an enthusiast however. In my view Dele is too ready with the gamesmanship (another word for cheating) when he should be letting his skill do the talking. His attitude has been questioned too, most notably by manager Jose Mourinho and he appears to have lost his way a little. He certainly didn't cover himself in glory in the All or Nothing fly-on-the-wall TV documentary when he revealed that he'd only just learned how easy it was to cook baked beans (!) and that he'd managed to damage a couple of team mates cars in the car park at the training ground. He was also reported to be addicted to video gaming and was having relationship problems as a result. One hopes that Dele gets a grip and makes the most of his abilities over the next few years: it would be such a waste to watch his career going downhill.
With barely three minutes on the clock Spurs took the lead through Harry Kane who did well to stay on his feet in a situation where a lot of strikers might have chosen to go down. Tottenham's second started with an intelligent throw out from keeper Hugo Lloris which deceived the highly rated (by himself at least) Dejan Lovren allowing Harry Kane to burst through and square for Heung-min Son to score. There were only 12 minutes on the clock! Mo Salah pulled one back for the Reds on 24 minutes but Spurs would go in at the break with a two goal cushion again following a fabulous opportunist strike by Dele right on half time. Any nerves amongst Spurs followers were quashed on 56 minutes when Harry Kane scored his second and Tottenham's fourth to make the game safe. Who said that Kane couldn't score at Wembley for Spurs?
There were a few notable occurrences that day. Over the years I've seen Liverpool 43 times and they've only lost 7 of those games. But this was the heaviest defeat and surely redoubled their desire to secure the services of Virgil van Dyke and Alisson Becker? Incidentally, Tottenham's second goal was the 1,000th conceded by Liverpool in the Premier League. We were also treated to a sighting of Diego Maradona, a guest of the Tottenham Hotspur, who put in an appearance on the touchline at half time. It was the last time that most of us would see him alive (he died in 2020).
By the way, mention of Mo Salah reminds me of a joke. What do you call a fat Liverpool fan? No Salad!
CRB Match No. 2184
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