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Topics: Tottenham Hotspur, Dele Alli
Josh Lawless
Dele Alli's first days at Spurs have been recalled by defender Ben Davies, who waxed lyrical about his ability.
Spurs signed Alli for a fee of just £5 million from MK Dons in February 2015 and joined up with the North London ahead of the following season.
He finished the 2014/15 campaign with 16 goals from midfield in League One and despite making the step up to two divisions higher, Alli was completely unfazed.
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In his first training sessions, Alli had no issues trying elaborate things and played with a real swagger - even if the management were surprised.
"Dele was incredible when he turned up, he was a young kid from Milton Keynes and he got thrown into first-team training and he would just do stuff for fun," Davies said on the Gab and Jules show.
"I think to start with, the management, the staff were like ‘What’s this kid doing?’
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“[They would say] like play properly, get the ball and play here. He would just get the ball to feet, step over it, and try to go through other people’s legs, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.
"Trying to flick the ball and at this time I remember he was playing as a six. He was a CDM, he would fly into tackles and you’d get some boys be like ‘relax’.
“Then it would come to pre-season and we played against Real Madrid and it would be like the Dele Show.
"From that he was just a kid who there was no level of competition, that was the best way to describe him. What he did in League One he would try against [Luka] Modric, against [Toni] Kroos, It was so irrelevant to who he was playing against.”
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Alli's first two seasons at Spurs saw him won the PFA Young Player of the Year, scoring a combined total of 28 goals.
He quickly grew into one of the most exciting talents in world football but ended up leaving for Everton in January 2022.
Alli failed to make an impact and moved to Besiktas in a loan spell which proved unfruitful.
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He is yet to play for Everton this season having had to undergo surgery to repair a tendon injury last year.
Alli, who opened up about mental health struggles in July, is believed to be making positive progress.