If there’s someone else brought in to compete with Dalot, trusted to do the job week in week out - and by extension implying that Dalot cannot be - why would Dalot get games, outside of sporadic opportunities when resting others/ covering for injuries? For me, that affects a player’s confidence and physical conditioning negatively, often to the extent that a player simply never does himself justice when he does get a chance.
Players such as Valencia and Young are the right kind of age to compete with Dalot. The pathway to being established first choice is much clearer. Bring in a player to do the business who’s only mid-twenty’s and that pathway is gone - Dalot is consigned to a backup role.
Now I’m not actually saying that that won’t end up being the way to go, or proclaiming Dalot to be at the desired level right now. I just think, given the circumstances, that it is too early to do so. He only moved to the club in the summer and his pre-season was heavily disrupted by injury (and he seems to have had a few more issues since then - a slight cause for concern in itself). At 19, it is time for him to be playing senior football, he came in with a reputation as a top prospect and we did pay a reasonable sum for him. For me, we’ve made our choice. In reality, bringing in a bona fide starter - providing they were to perform adequately - kills off Dalot’s chances for the foreseeable future. Dalot becomes a relatively pointless signing.
We chose to sign him, aware of his lack of professional game time and knowing that he required surgery. So I would think that another right back purchase shouldn’t be considered at all until next January at the earliest, after a full pre-season. If the club feel then, or beyond that point, that Dalot is not showing enough then so be it. To do so in the current window or the summer though, you would have to question his signing - why not just pass on him and try someone else who was ready to come into the team?