Clive Allen on Alli and Højbjerg
4 min read
Rotten weather, a day to stay indoors and finish a few more articles for future publication, including an absolute masterpiece that anyone with children should read, if they want their children to have a successful life.
It is also a key to players improving their performance and not something I have written about in any detail before.
In your second Tottenham Tittle Tattle post of the day, we'll see what Clive Allen had to say.
You remember him.
As a teenager Arsenal made him the first £1m teenager, buying him from QPR for £1.25m, then selling him 62 days later without playing a single competitive game for them.
They sold him because they wanted to buy England left-back Kenny Sansom and Terry Neil, the Arsenal manager (later to become Spurs manager) suggested he talk to Crystal Palace boss Terry Venables (later to become Spurs manager) and the deal was done.
Allen was best known at Spurs for his 49 goals in the 1986/87 season, a quite amazing feat.
As you can guess,we played with a lone striker that year, something totally uncommon back then when a striking partnership was par for the course.
Tottenham 3 Ipswich Town 0
Listening to former Spurs goalscorer Clive Allen after the game, he saw one of my bugbears with Spurs being addressed, namely the crisp passing that's needed to give teammates maximum time on the ball.
It may sound simple, but it's critical and we haven't been doing it for more than the 7 years I have been writing about it.
Possession football is fine, but slow possession football is not usually the order of the day and when you have your full-backs wide and advanced, ready to move into space,week after week, it is infuriating when the pass to them is too slow for them to take advantage of the opportunity.
It is in that situation that they stop and play backwards, giving the opposition time to have even more players behind the ball.
Where is the logic in the mentality that, 'I can't see a pass so I'll slowly roll the ball to you to see if you can see a pass'?
When it arrives the guy is already under pressure, the passing lanes have already been blocked, what options are you giving him?
This was the beauty of Ryan Mason, he received the ball and pinged it out wise, wasting no time in starting attacks.
Nobody since has done that, it's more like let's look pretty doing it, let's be aesthetically pleasing, let's imagine I'm playing a wonder pass.
The other pleasing aspect of the game was the off the ball movement, which is crucial in the Premier League.
When we struggle against packed defences, it is often our movement that let's us down and that leads to us reducing the passing opportunities, a vicious circle so it was pleasing to see greater movement.
"I thought it was a a really good performance from him, the positions he took up.
"Then I just felt he showed he's got great awareness of what's going on around him whatever area of the field he picked the ball up in and most certainly the pass for the for the opening goal was fantastic, his vision and his awareness of where Sessegnon was."
Clive Allen on Pierre-Emile Højbjerg
"I thought he fitted in well. He showed us exactly what he's going to give the team.
"I thought he put in a disciplined display, very, very good efficient with his passing, never gave the ball away.
"I thought it was an outstanding first performance in a Spurs shirt.
"I couldn't count one pass that he actually gave away and what I liked as well was the weight of his passes. Really crisp passing, good weight to give teammates a real chance when they received the ball.
"I felt what you what you see as well, is the way that the other players have accepted him.
"They were clearly, the defenders were clearly looking for him as soon as they were in possession of the ball, to play into him they had a confidence in what he was doing for the team.
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