Jose Mourinho criticised by Martin Keown for ‘childish’ Instagram post with Dele Alli’s Spurs career in jeopardy

Martin Keown has hit out at Jose Mourinho for is “childish” Instagram post that he believes will have left midfielder Dele Alli fearing his Tottenham Hotspur career is over.

Spurs slumped to a 1-0 defeat against Royal Antwerp on Thursday evening, handing Mourinho’s side a setback in the Europa League after becoming the first Premier League side to suffer a loss in Europe this season.

Mourinho’s response to going behind was to make four half-time changes, with Alli, Varlos Vinicius, Steven Bergwijn and Giovano Lo Celso all replaced in a sign of the Portuguese’s dissatisfaction with their first-half display.

Despite the changes, Tottenham were unable to claw their way back into the affair, and Mourinho made the unusual decision to post his immediate reaction on his Instagram page to criticise his players, with a training session pencilled in for Friday morning as punishment for the poor display.

"Bad performances deserve bad results,” Mourinho said. “Hope everyone in this bus is as upset as I am. Tomorrow, 11am training."

The post caused a stir as Mourinho had also criticised his players in his post-match press conference, adding that if he could, he would have substituted all 11 players at the break.

But former Arsenal and England defender Martin Keown criticised the Spurs boss for his petulant post, which he believed was uncalled for and displayed a lack of respect to the players who he replaced at half-time who would already have been feeling “wounded”.

“(Say it) In the dressing room, though, surely? I’m not happy with him going public," Keown said on BT Sport. "Maybe he didn’t say anything, we heard that he didn’t say anything a couple of weeks ago, he just left the players to it.

"I don’t think my respect would grow for the manager because I’m thinking some of those players would have felt wounded at half-time when they were taken off.

"Four of them taken off, the likes of Dele Alli, you’re feeling that maybe my career’s over at Spurs. But it’s part of a collective, it can happen.

"The players that came on weren’t any better. Is this how we’re going to communicate?

"If you’re gonna talk to me, talk to my face. It’s a bit childish sometimes what we’re hearing.

"We, as players, have to keep our mouths shut, but he can say whatever he wants publicly. I’d rather keep it in the dressing room.

"If I’m not good enough, I’ll accept that, but I want to work hard to get back in the team.

"Let’s keep it healthy, I’m unsure if that’s healthy.”

Alli looked to be on his way out of Spurs during the summer, but the arrival of Gareth Bale did not lead to Alli’s exit even though it has put him on the fringe of the squad this season.

But former Spurs striker Glenn Hoddle believes that he needs to be ready to take the rare opportunities that come his way, with Thursday night proving one that slipped through his grasp that Mourinho will not have missed.

“I think it is (getting difficult for Alli),” Hoddle said. “This was his opportunity and Jose put him in and said ‘put it (a good performance) between my eyes’. But it just didn't happen for him.

“In his overall game, he's giving the ball away too much at times. His options are there and he's trying his best but it's not happening for him. Sloppy play is not going to get him back in the team.”

Fellow BT Sport pundit Owen Hargreaves called on Alli to stop playing it safe and to go back to the free-flowing football that made him one of the best midfielders in the Premier League under Mauricio Pochettino, having endured a dramatic slump in form over the past year.

“He’s lacking in confidence and he's making mistakes,” Hargreaves said. “He knows he's being watched like a hawk by Mourinho, but when your confidence is low you play safe.

“He was just stopping the ball dead instead of keeping it moving. He's not trying to make mistakes. He needs to get that freedom (which we saw) when he was outrageous a few years ago.”

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