Few English midfielders in recent memory have sparked the kind of excitement and fanfare that Dele Alli produced having joined Tottenham Hotspur from MK Dons.
During his debut campaign at Spurs under the guidance of then-manager Mauricio Pochettino, Dele scored one of the best goals seen in the Premier League of the last 10 years when he managed to control the ball, loft it over the head of Mile Jedinak before lashing a delightful volley beyond Wayne Hennessey in January 2016.
The aftermath of that goal led to shouts of Dele being the next great English midfield hope in the wake of Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard's recent retirements. In fact, at the tender age of just 23, Dele already had more Premier League goal contributions than both of the aforementioned duo at the same stage of their careers.
In 2016, Dele was crowned as the PFA Young Player of the Year as well as included in the PFA Team of the Year. Records continued to tumble as the midfielder surpassed the 50 goal mark in fewer games than Chelsea legend and current Real Madrid talent Eden Hazard.
Dele had even managed to make the transition onto both the European and international stage seamlessly for Spurs in the Champions League and the England senior side respectively. He bagged the second goal of England's 2-0 World Cup quarter-final win over Sweden in 2018 and followed that up by helping to inspire Spurs to the Champions League final the very next season.
Yet, upon Pochettino's sacking later that year, and Jose Mourinho's subsequent arrival, things turned sour for Dele in North London. The 'Special One' did not exactly see eye-to-eye with the midfielder and the breakdown in their relationship played out for all to see courtesy of Amazon's All or Nothing documentary.
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Early on in their time together, Mourinho openly dubbed Alli "a f****** lazy guy" during a team pre-match meeting. That season saw the player barely feature and as a result miss out on a place in Gareth Southgate's England squad for Euro 2020.
It is a damning indictment of how far Dele's stock fell under Mourinho that few even gave the fact a midfielder, who was once a Three Lions regular and scored at the World Cup in 2018, who was now not in the side, a second thought.
A brief resurgence under Mourinho's successor Nuno Espirito Santo proved to be a false dawn for Dele, as the former Wolves boss was eventually sacked and replaced by Antonio Conte who had even less time for him than his fellow former Chelsea manager.
Eventually, less than a week shy of the six-year anniversary of that stunning goal at Selhurst Park - as we come full circle - Dele's Spurs career was over. The midfielder was deemed surplus to requirements by a club that once harboured hopes they were sitting on a future great.
He joined a struggling Everton side led by Frank Lampard with hopes of becoming a talisman for a club side once again. Four months later, it hasn't exactly panned out like that. Dele has been an unused substitute for the last two league games and as the relegation dogfight hots up that situation is unlikely to change soon.
Dele's short time with the Toffees has been so underwhelming that some have already questioned why Everton forked out £40million to bring him to the club in the first place.
Sky Sports pundit Stephen Warnock pondered: "Why did you buy Dele Alli?’. What is Dele Alli doing at that football club now? What is Dele Alli thinking stood on the side-lines? What must he be doing in training to not get in that team?"
Stan Collymore went one further and publicly urged Dele to consider an early retirement if he can't manage to force his way into the Everton fold. "Dele needs to answer some serious questions, for himself, no one else," Collymore wrote. "He has to ask: do you want to play professional football, or are you not cut out for it?"
Lampard inevitably leapt to Dele's defence and insisted Collymore's comments were way off the mark, he claimed he sees the required desire every day in training - and yet, Dele remains out of the Toffees team, out in the cold and with very little light at the end of the tunnel.
