Admittedly, I saw very little of Tyler Dibling at Southampton. The odd highlights clip, a game here and there on the telly, but nowhere near enough to sit here and tell you hand on heart how good he is – and I’m not sure many of us really can. What I’ve always felt, though, based on what I read from before he signed, is that this is a lad who, more than most, was going to need time and patience.
So this isn’t me telling you we’ve landed a world-beater. His reputation was built looking like a talent in a Southampton side that finished rock bottom, and reputations made in teams that poor are notoriously hard to trust. Maybe there’s a real player in there; maybe he’s a decent one who’ll need everything around him to click. I honestly couldn’t tell you yet – and if we’re all being straight with each other, neither can anyone else.
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Everything was set up for a slow start
Look at the situation he walked into. He arrived for an initial £35m, a fee that could climb to the wrong side of £40m with add-ons, and a number like that hangs round a teenager’s neck like a millstone. He was 19 when he signed, still only 20 now, walking into a new city and a new dressing room with a price tag demanding he start producing from day one.
And then there’s the manager. David Moyes has never been one to throw teenagers in and let them learn on the job. Minutes are earned slowly under Moyes, and for a lad still finding his feet, that was always going to make for a hard first year.
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The shy outsider
The part that struck me most, though, was the way Southampton themselves talked about him. In a lovely piece on their own website – “the shy outsider who became the face of Staplewood” – they painted a picture of a quiet Devon kid who joined the academy at eight, whose dad drove him up from Exeter twice a week, and who admits he was painfully introverted growing up. Whatever he’s got only really comes out once he’s settled and feels at home. That’s not a criticism, it’s just who he is: quiet off the pitch, and only himself once he’s comfortable.
You can see that same thread running right through his career. At 16 he joined his boyhood club Chelsea – the move every kid dreams of – and within a couple of months had decided it wasn’t for him and gone back to Southampton, a call he later described as “probably the best decision ever.” That tells you plenty. This is a lad who needs to feel right in himself before the football flows. So drop him into a £35m spotlight, a new city, and a manager who makes youngsters wait, and of course the first season was going to be a slog.
The only way is up
And a slog it was – let’s not pretend otherwise. Fourteen Premier League appearances, only four of them starts, 371 minutes across the whole campaign and not a single goal. The “forgotten man” headlines, the stand-off stories, the whispers about cutting the losses and selling him on to RB Leipzig. For a £35m signing it read like a disaster, and I understand why plenty of Blues have already made their minds up on him.
Here’s where I land differently. The good thing about last season is that expectations are now on the floor. Nobody’s expecting much of anything, really. That might just be the best thing that could have happened to him. He’s had a full year to settle into the city, the club and the standard.
So no, I’m not writing him off – but I’m not going to sit here overselling him either. The honest truth is we still don’t really know how good Tyler Dibling is. Now, finally, with the pressure off and nobody expecting a thing, we might actually get to find out. The only way is up for the lad, and I’m looking forward to seeing it.