It's interesting the variety of opinions there are on DCL , opionions are just that mine are no more conclusive than anybody else's but here goes. DCL is nowhere near ready to be the No9 in a decent PL team yet, and any suggestions that his best position is "striker" and should somehow replace Lukaku at 9 are for me bizarre. Someone said he'd played well at 9 for the U23s recently, well the recent game I saw he was ok but nothing special , and in the U23s derby game playing against the experience RS defender Sakho he barely made any impression . So i think he would struggle as a 9 in the PL at such a young age.
The best period he has had this season in my view was the pre Christmas spell for the U23s when he played 8 and 10 to Niasse 's no9. Niasse was on fire scoring 7 goals in as many games and when you study the clips of some of those goals DCL played a huge part . He was making incisive runs pulling defenders away to create space for Niasse , holding the ball up to set up attacks , using his pace to get behind defenders and in doing so made a number of assists for Niasse , as well as scoring a few goals himself. I imagine RK , Unsy and others analysed these games more thoroughly than I was able to do and concluded that one of them should go out on loan to secure himself a career away from us, the other would stay and be progressed towards the first team .
The progress DCL has made since he joined us is , well phenomenal , turning a £1.5 million teenager with not much first team experience into a PL starter reflects highly on our coaching team and the lad himself. He's got some way way to go yet though and I'm still not sure of him in some aspects but at 20 you have to believe that he's only going to get better. I don't buy this " he's playing out of position as a winger" bit, that's like looking at a Barca team sheet and saying Messi is a winger. Koeman knows he's not a beat the full back cross the ball from the goal line winger and is not trying to turn him into one, what he's looking to get is him supporting Rom the way he showed he could Niasse, although inevitably DCL is finding that aspect more difficult in the PL. Marcus Rashford gave the perfect reply a few weeks ago to a question about being played out of position, he shrugged his shoulders and said I'm still learning and I need to be able to play in different ways not just as striker if I want to be part of the first team . Same applies to DCL , he's still learning his trade and needs to be able to play in a number of positions .
He is without doubt the best young attacker we've had at u21/U23s level for years , although I'd say other clubs like Chelsea have probably better young attackers judging them on international appearances , but few have had the chance to play at PL as he has. So far for me he hasn't set the PL on fire, but I can see why Koeman plays him in certain games, and it always comes back to one thing - he's 20 , still relatively inexperienced and will only get better. What we don't know yet is just how much better and what level he can reach.