My praise/analysis is definitely not just simply 'he's doing well in relation to the team', it's more 'he's doing well objectively despite the team'. Your 'neutral' stance doesn't really hold when you, yourself (in other words) have said he's very replaceable, we (the people who have praised him) have lowered standards by judging him out of context because the team is shite, that his form is not really here or there, that what's he doing now is fairly standard etc. It comes more from, 'the grass is greener on the other side' perspective imo. Again, that's fine but I think we both have our bias and of course I would argue my one is more 'truer' objectively speaking
I think if you read my posts over time then I you will see a trend where I warm up a little towards him. So while I may not be an enthusiastic supporter, I am certainly not a hater at all. Even if I participated a lot in this thread - lets face it, half of it are dialogues between the two of us. I was never really against Dalot, I want to maintain that - my position was, that he was at a level where he was easier to replace than say Shaw while at the same time more money could have been recuperated with a Dalot sale. As I said earlier, this has changed, I'd rather get rid of Shaw now than Dalot.
But this doesn't automatically mean, that I am super happy with him. For me personally, he is on a positive trend but he is a bit of an inbetweener. It isn't a situation where you could say "no matter who we will come up against, Dalot will keep him quiet" and he also isn't one to make a statement like "Lets see how team XYZ deals with the threat of Dalot" about. That is what I mean, he is a stable performer but what is the thing that really goes onto the marketing flyer? Every team needs stable performers of course but we also need the other ones. And if we invest the time to develop players, I think we should be sure that they can reach a very high level. If Dalot develops those capabilities, I am the last one to question him but as of right now, from what I see and what experience I made with young United players, the chances for him staying the level where he is at aren't that much lower than the chances of him stepping up a level or two.
That is the difficulty when discussing things, it is always important to know each others context. Because just because I consider a player to have this or that potential, it doesn't automatically means that he cannot be important to United. Its two different things for me and I guess I have to do a better job to explain my position.
As for the similar skill set wise issue, that make sense on paper but have you looked at the individual offensive influence (so not just G+A stats) of the current fullbacks of the Liverpool, City and Arsenal teams? You don't really because short of TAA/Robertson (who have both regressed in their importance to their team because of injuries/age/different roles) individual seasons, the sum of the parts of the team is still contributing massively. I've said it before, anything Dalot is doing right now is nothing short of what the current top 4/5 crop is doing right now; I'd go as far to say, he'd be an improvement on more than half.
I see your point. I'd still maintain that most of our competitors wouldn't switch their options for Dalot because even if he has his upsides, they aren't as big to make the switch worthwile. But that is a little academic I guess, maybe the key difference here is that I don't really follow the whole league or the development of specific players other than ours. When I try to evaluate the current quality of a player, I compare them to the greats I have seen. Which would be Evra, Walker, Alba. And compared to that, Dalot obviously looks different than when compared to I don't know Ben White in this season. So if Dalot is one of the leagues best fullbacks this year, I applaud him but I also think to myself that it probably is a bad time for fullbacks these days. But I think, this is an important point for me - because when you for example say something like "Dalot is one of the best this year" then I really have to contain myself and remind myself that I shouldn't be triggered by that alone because the statement might be true, it just doesn't have the same meaning I read into it.
This 'need' to see an attacking full back can only ring true once the foundation of the team is there really. Frimpong in a back four or five in this team is not going to change our results, which I believe is your biggest issue of judging this particular player's performance.
I am not sure, if that should be worded as absolute as you did here. I mean, sure, every player will benefit from being part in a functioning unit. But on the same side, every player has to add something to this unit to make it functional. We simply don't know what would change if we had Frimpong in the team. I agree, it might make absolutely make no difference, we might even get worse. But it is impossible to say for sure. And theoretically, having at least one capable attacker on the right side, let alone two if one of wingers finally decides to turn up, definitely has the chance to change the outlook of our matches as it makes containing us more difficult for the opponent.
