I admit I thought he was poor. Delighted he’s proving me wrong!!
What is Diogo Dalot good at?
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Classic RedCafe. The teams form improves playing a far more conservative system under a much more organised coach, some of the feel-good factor comes back and suddenly all is forgotten and the lads who are currently starting are all amazing players. It's no wonder we bounce up and down emotionally.
Dalot has done well recently, lets be clear about that, however, he was starting from a very, very low base and it couldn't really get much worse.
I have still yet to see any evidence whatsoever that he can contribute in an attacking sense and I'm not sure yet whether his improved defensive performances are down to an upturn in his own form or just more generally the improved attitude and organisation of the team.
To be honest, I would say the same about Malacia. I love his attitude and energy and I think he has loads of raw talent. Yet there's tonnes of work to be done to get him to the level of an Andy Robertson or a Cancelo. So let's not build these players up to be something they are not and then call them names and accuse them of not trying/caring when we have a few bad results and/or when we start to try to play a bit more expansive
No he was.
This wasn't a young talented player not quite putting his game together. He was objectively really poor.
It's great to see him performing in a position we all thought we'd struggle in.
But let's see how it goes once this initial new manager burst of excitement amongst the players dies down a bit.
How can he have been objectively poor? Doesn't even make any sense. He was subjectively poor in your opinion.
In my opinion he was just a young lad from a completely different footballing culture that came at a young age and had no senior experience. There wasn't even a lot to judge as he didn't get an extended run, probably because he was in fact not ready which is not a reason for big declarations.
Goes out on loan, does okay, comes back and gets a chance under Ralf, does fine without setting the world alight, and now he has really picked up.. surprise surprise after gaining a season and a half of proper experience here and in Italy.
Honestly I wrote him off completely early in the season. It's easy to forget that he's just 23, but we've seen so many false dawns in recent years with a lot of players so I get the skepticism. Happy to be proven wrong if he can continue his current form.
It does seem that good coaching is helping a lot of our players though. Who'd have thought.
It does seem that good coaching is helping a lot of our players though. Who'd have thought.
Diogo Dalot has been a Manchester United player since 2018. He’s been in form since match day 3 this season. He’s playing well, but come on
He might do a Vini Jnr this season and just turn a corner. Or he might do a Luke Shaw and be good for a few months. We'll have to wait and see.
What cannot be doubted though is this guy has always been rated in an European context. How many sub-20 defenders has Mourinho actually bought in his time as a top-level manager
What cannot be doubted though is this guy has always been rated in an European context. How many sub-20 defenders has Mourinho actually bought in his time as a top-level manager
Football. Been plainly obvious since Rangnick gave him a chance last season. Defenders who are technically excellent with both feet and capable of playing out from the back under pressure don't grow on trees, we'd do well to tie him up to a 5 year deal and quickly before he gets huge offers from teams looking to take him on a free.
He definitely has the ability in terms of passing, crossing, ball carrying and general attitude when it comes to attacking/ball progression even if it is in spurts, so I'd say it's harsh to say you've not seen any evidence. Unless of course you are talking about consistency, which is fair but then that could be said about the whole team.
As for the names mentioned, I've made a post about this in response to somebody else, which may give you another perspective/expectation:
You might want to look at the videos posting there too: https://www.redcafe.net/threads/diogo-dalot-2022-23-performances.471411/page-20#post-29508960
Overall though, I agree we shouldn't jump into conclusions.
It's strange that only a few days back we were still being linked with Dumfries. Not sure what the source was though.
Bizarre most posters on here don’t understand this still , just because he isn’t an old school rampaging fullback running down and pinging crosses in constantly (which we don’t do under ETH anyways). But sure keep underrating him I guess.
Two footed and a quality passer. Two quality’s invaluable to a team from a defender and both Malacia and Diogo have this.
How he heck did so many managers play AwB over Dalot. Was it an English bias or aWB’s transfer fee? In hindsight, Mourinho seems right. Just needed time to grow into his body and the league
I think so too, no matter how small the last 4-6 games are at least some evidence. There are for sure those who are simply getting overhyped from the shift back to more conservative tactics but I'm backing that Dalot won't be one of them. Only just guessing by looking at general play during progressive phases. Where others have regressed to their questionable decisionmaking selves and poor general play Dalot has stayed consistent with his ball progression. His form working with ETH goes all the way back to preseason. On a lesser note Dalot was never really one of them who looked better when we played negative tactics. There isn't a body of work indicating he's reliant on it. If anything he looks better when we are organised going forward. At the very least now knows where to aim his deliveries. They've looked deadly.
He's not poor. You wouldn't believe his collection of Rolex.
I could see the potential of Dalot but I genuinely thought he didn’t have the drive to be defensive when needed. I felt he’d be like Trent with 50% of his offensive output with the same frailties in defence. When he went to Milan he showed some good all round skill but I didn’t see it working out for him unless a highly tactically manager came to United. Since Ten Hag came in, he’s been brilliant. He’s not as good as Malacia in defence but he’s got a fantastic attitude and he is GREAT in possession. We haven’t seen the best of him by a long shot. He’s going to get even better.
I think it’s plainly obvious at this point he is not useless. How good he is will take a long time to figure out but we can recognise some of those early assessments as wrong. This is coming from someone who also thought he was at best mediocre in basically every way.
This. It's not like he's now Roberto Carlos, and previous criticism of him was an act of insanity. Just looking more promising for a handful of games, hopefully he can keep that trajectory.
Only Ole played AWB over Dalot. Ole bought AWB and played him all the time. Rangnick made Dalot first choice and put AWB in the bench. Ten Hag never plays AWB and plays Dalot all the time.
I don't think you'll find a lot of people arguing we should start Dalot over AWB in 2019/20 or that we should keep him and play him as starter in 2020/21. For quite good reasons.
Its early days in his transform but if he remains consistent this season it might be the most wrong I've ever been about a player. I honestly saw no hope for him at all by the end of last season - he's like a new man with confidence and aggression
Because in his first season you could count on one hand how many times opposing players could get past AWB. They tried and failed and he was very successful defensively and a big part of turning around our pathetic defensive record before him. 2nd season good too but not quite as impenetrable. 3rd and people get past him and he wasnt having as big an impact on our defensive record, which was poor
Meanwhile Dalot came in with not that much playing time and most of it at left back for Porto. He was weak defensively so he didnt play. He was sent out on loan to Milan, did well and kept a starting place and came back a better defender. We havent seen a great deal of him doing fantastic attacking for United, hopefully the Portugal performance will lead to that
Good summing up. You could perhaps add about AWB that also his on-the-ball and attacking development just didn't happen.
He's good at passing. At least he was last yearBe honest and just admit that he just can't have even a half of these stats
Nah, some of us thought he was quite good last year considering everything, and that he could build on it this year. He always had the ability. He just needed the application and confidence.
Hopefully we get him signed up to a new contract.
Well. He completed 79,8% of his attempted passes, which ranked 12th on United among players with at least 10 90s. 4th for progressive passes/90, with 4.95, and also for completed passes into the box/90 (1.3) . But tops for completed crosses into the box/90 (0.45). 13th for expected assists/90, zero actual assists. 10th for Shot Creating Actions/90, 11th for Goal creating actions/90. So that's a fairly mixed picture, even if you just compare him with other players on United.
Because some things are so blatant they're beyond difference of opinion.
Shaw was poor last season. Haaland has had a good start. They're not subjective opinions are they?
Similarly Dalot has been really poor up until this season. It wasn't just a young player havong the usual consistency issues. He just didn’t look up to it at all. Hopefully the penny really has dropped with him.
Agreed, AWB performed well and seemed to fit in. The team defended quite deep a lot of the time, which suits him well. Adding to that, he did show some signs of improving his attacking output in the 20-21 season. I think he had something like 2 goals and 5 or 6 assists(?) There were absolutely other things which he did not improve, but I think there were reasons for being optimistic about him. Last season, however, his performances were really poor.
I also agree that Dalot markedly improved during and after his loan at Milan. He became less rash in his defending and positionally more sound. Again, the team were, at times, a disaster, last season, but Dalot performed decently compared to many of the others. His performances were better than previous, which is a positive, given the circumstances. There were many reasons to expect improvement from Dalot after last season IMO. He had several performances for Portugal which I thought were pretty good too.
What we are seeing now is positive development but it's not all that surprising based on what has gone before. I think he can continue to perform well, though any talk of "world class" or similar is very premature (nothing to do with your post, @Ekeke, just a general comment)
Put together a stats package:
Some takeaways;
- Last season, his offensive impact was in most respects essentially similar to Kyle Walker, and very far below that of TAA and James. At the same time he did not offer Walker's safety in passing (more than 10% lower pass completion). He did more of defensive actions like blocks, interceptions and tackles than the other 3, but then again United did a lot more defending. (Of course they also did a lot less attacking, which also impacts on Dalots offensive stats.)
- Perhaps surprisingly, he is not really statistically improved so far this year (although that's naturally still a small sample, and includes 2 awful games from the whole team out of 6 total). His passing has been markedly worse overall, and he seems to be carrying the ball less than last season.
Some takeaways;
- Last season, his offensive impact was in most respects essentially similar to Kyle Walker, and very far below that of TAA and James. At the same time he did not offer Walker's safety in passing (more than 10% lower pass completion). He did more of defensive actions like blocks, interceptions and tackles than the other 3, but then again United did a lot more defending. (Of course they also did a lot less attacking, which also impacts on Dalots offensive stats.)
- Perhaps surprisingly, he is not really statistically improved so far this year (although that's naturally still a small sample, and includes 2 awful games from the whole team out of 6 total). His passing has been markedly worse overall, and he seems to be carrying the ball less than last season.
| All stats per 90 | All 21/22 | ||||
| Dalot 21/22 | Dalot 22/23 | Alexander-Arnold | James | Walker | |
| Pass completion | 79.8 | 71.8 | 74.4 | 86.5 | 88.9 |
| Progressive passes | 4.95 | 3.9 | 8.8 | 5.8 | 4.4 |
| Compl crosses box | 0.45 | 0.51 | 0.82 | 0.63 | 0.26 |
| Compl passes box | 1.3 | 1.5 | 2.8 | 2.4 | 1.0 |
| xA | 0.05 | 0.10 | 0.35 | 0.28 | 0.06 |
| SCA | 1.85 | 2.36 | 4.73 | 3.81 | 1.85 |
| GCA | 0.25 | 0.17 | 0.54 | 0.53 | 0.26 |
| Tackles | 2.9 | 2.4 | 1.4 | 1.9 | 1.2 |
| Blocks | 1.85 | 1.86 | 1.23 | 1.4 | 1.03 |
| Interceptions | 2.2 | 2.0 | 2.4 | 1.01 | 1.28 |
| Touches | 70.1 | 66.6 | 94.9 | 90.7 | 90.7 |
| Dribbles (succ.) | 0.8 | 0.9 | 0.8 | 1.6 | 0.4 |
| Prog. Carries | 4.9 | 2.7 | 4.9 | 7.5 | 4.7 |
| Team success +/- | + 0.39 | N/A | + 1.83 | + 0.97 | + 1.44 |
I don't want to seem negative but I still think he's not gonna be good enough to be a starter here. Hopefully I'm proven wrong.
Much better from him this season, but let's not get carried away.
Its mostly due to rearguard actions games so far, he's been up for the fight this season.
But games where we have most of the possession and are expected to win, it the same old story from him, and the rest of the team to be fair.
Honestly think we will still end up replacing him next summer.
Its mostly due to rearguard actions games so far, he's been up for the fight this season.
But games where we have most of the possession and are expected to win, it the same old story from him, and the rest of the team to be fair.
Honestly think we will still end up replacing him next summer.
Forget about individual players for a minute though...I could be talking about virtually ANY player in our squad when I say 'last year was an aberration and this year they have improved'.
My point is, we tend to go through these cycles were we have a terrible season, appoint a new manager, go back to basics, sign some new players, win a few games and the feel-good factor comes back to a certain extent. At that point, certain people get carried away, talk our players up way beyond their abilities and start demanding title challenges and/or trophies.
Then invariably once the press and the fans have piled enough pressure onto the team and the manager, expectations get to a level that they struggle to hit consistently and when we try to be more progressive/expansive in order to win the volume of games needed to secure trophies, it all falls apart.
Now, let's just get back to Dalot for a second. He has played well in spells this year. He also played 90-minutes in the defeat to Brighton (and was poor), 90-minutes in the 0-4 defeat to Brentford (which thankfully I missed) and 90-minutes in the home defeat to a rather average Sociedad sign.
In fairness, he was very good in our two best performances of the season, against Arsenal and Liverpool, albeit in a much more clearly defined 'old-school- fullback role (in those games specifically) i.e. 'get tight to the winger/wide forward nice and early, play up against them'.
Now we have posters crowing about how somehow they were 'right' that he was a great player all along...hang on a minute...have we lowered standards that far? I get that we're not the 'Man United' of old and need to be patient, I have said that myself, and so it's pointless comparing these lads with the likes of Ferdinand, Scholes, Giggs, (old) Ronaldo, Rooney, Keane etc...
However, in my opinion, we have still not fallen THAT far that a mixed bag of some good, some average, some poor performances suddenly makes a Man United player.
Let's give ETH time, let's support the players but let's not start getting carried away
He played only the first half against Real Sociedad.
Yes but if you compare him with the other big 6 RBs, only TAA is better than him at working the ball up the pitch.
And that's last season when most thought he was rubbish and he was playing in an awful team. The fella clearly has the tools to play progressive attacking football. Ten Hag football.
Bolded part: 1, By what measure? If you compare him to James' level last season his passing accuracy is much less, he makes much fewer progressive passes, completes fewer crosses into box and much fewer passes into the box, his xA are a fraction of James' as is his SCA and GCA, he has much fewer touches, makes half as many successful dribbles and much fewer progressive carries. in fact, he is consistently and obviously very inferior to James across the board across pretty much every indicator for this part of the game. He's more or less on level with Walker (except for passing accuracy and touches), but that's not a high bar for attacking or on-the-ball impact.
2, his stats so far this year are not really better. In some respects they are worse.
I don't think it's very clear that he's already got the tools to be a high-impact player on the ball. At least he hasn't shown that so far.
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Wow, thanks, hadn't caught that. Two goals! Let's hope he just picks up against City right where he left off.
The guy said he'd seen no evidence. Sorry pal, didn't mean to upset you.
Be honest and just admit that he just can't have even a half of these stats
I don’t want to be overly positive but I think he has potential to become one of best RB in the league.
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