A top class wonderkid is attracting interest from Everton - but could another club enter the race?
It’s a fairly significant offer for a player with just four professional goals and only 20 league starts as a senior first team player, but it showcases just how highly Dibling is rated while also signalling just how far the Saints feel their academy prospect can go in the game in years to come.
Dibling only played one league match for Russell Martin’s team when they won promotion to the top-flight via the Championship play-offs but became a near ever present in the match day squad throughout last year’s top-flight campaign. Overall, he played 33 league matches last season, scoring two and assisting once. He showcased moments of brilliance throughout the season but at times seemed to go missing as well in a challenging campaign where the tactically inept team picked up just 12 points; the second lowest in top-flight history.
Why are Premier League clubs so interested in Tyler Dibling?
Dibling caught the attention of the footballing world in April 2022 when he scored a hat-trick against Newcastle United in a Premier League 2 game. Dibling went viral on social media that afternoon due to the manner in which he scored his three goals and the fact that he was seamlessly able to glide past the Magpies’ young defenders with ease to score three almost identical-looking goals.
Dibling had scored 11 and made six assists in 27 appearances for Southampton’s Under-18s and looked destined to become the next great Saints academy star. However, he made the decision to sign for Chelsea in July 2022 despite interest from Newcastle before suddenly changing his mind and returning to Southampton in September 2022 after just two reserve appearances. He described Southampton as feeling like ‘home’ and his career has been on an upwards trajectory ever since, with the midfielder establishing himself as a key player for England’s Under-17 and Under-18 teams in recent years while also breaking into the first team.
Dibling is rated so highly due to his unique qualities on the ball, his dribbling ability and his versatility to play as both a central attacking midfielder and a right-winger to equal effect. He has many of the makings of a top footballer but is far from the finished product, leading to some questioning his price tags and others looking to get ahead of the curve and try and land a player that’s potential is through the roof.
Why Brentford should look to try and hijack Everton’s Tyler Dibling pursuit
Brentford are currently experiencing their most challenging summer since winning promotion to the Premier League in 2021. They’ve sold 20-goal winger Bryan Mbeumo to Manchester United for a figure of around £71m, lost club captain Christian Norgaard to Arsenal for £15m, goalkeeper Mark Flekken to Bayer Leverkusen and have seen manager Thomas Frank depart for rivals Tottenham Hotspur.
They have an unknown quantity to those outside the club in Keith Andrews, a former midfielder for Blackburn and Republic of Ireland, leading the team out next season, and alarmingly have 19-goal striker Yoane Wissa apparently refusing to train amid interest from Newcastle United. The Bees were a comfortable mid-table team that even briefly looked like flirting with Europe, with Wissa and Mbeumo being such a potent pair. But now could find themselves scrambling for goals and creativity next term.
There’s still some positives amid all this chaos, however, and that is that they have plenty of money to spend, club-record signing Thiago fit after an injury-ravaged year and a few new signings in Jordan Henderson and Caoimhin Kelleher to potentially steady the ship. Brentford need to get this summer right to evade the threat of relegation before eventually pushing on once again, and one player that could potentially help move them forward is Tyler Dibling.
He plays on the right side of attack, like Mbeumo, is gifted with the ball at his feet, and could develop well at Brentford where he’ll have much better players around him in comparison to Southampton. The Bees have bags of money to spend, a strong track record of developing players and could see Dibling as a solid target based on his underlying numbers such as his successful take-ons (11) which is actually the same as Mbeumo and the joint 14 best in the Premier League alongside Eberechi Eze as well. However, the one risk Brentford's highly esteemed recruitment team must take is whether the data and potential equate to Southampton’s reported £40m valuation of Dibling.
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