- Sep 2, 2013
- 15,170
- 72,171
He frustrates the hell out of me but you have a point. Also, almost the entire team has been crap this season so I suppose it’s not fair to just single Dele out.In Dele’s apparently shit season he has played 5 and 6 games fewer than Grealish and Maddison respectively, with 8 goals compared to Grealish on 7 and Maddison on 6, as well as 4 assists compared to Grealish on 6 and Maddison on 3. He’s also created 6 big chances compared to Grealish’s 6 and Maddison’s 7.
Averaging out Dele’s output in these areas, he’s by far the biggest attacking threat both as a goalscorer and as a creator. You could mitigate that by arguing that Grealish has achieved his stats with a worse performing side, but then you have to account for the fact that basically every attack goes through Grealish at Villa, as is also the case for Maddison at Leicester. Additionally, Dele competes with many more attack minded players at Spurs to get amongst these stats than either Maddison or Grealish do.
We focus on Dele’s frustrating qualities but I’d guess that we’d be frustrated plenty by either of the other two as well. Ultimately if he’s having a bad season, it’s only bad by his own standards and by any other measure he’s actually a highly productive player contributing significantly to anything good we do.
I think a lot of the criticism stems from what he could be. I miss the 2016-18 Dele