Davies, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to have anything to his game whatsoever.
The issue for me has always been the lack of any exceptional skill, or that shows the potential to be exceptional.
At the end of the day, you generally put players on the pitch at this level because they do something really, really well and you don't have to give up much, if anything, against the baseline for the position to get it. A player like Messi that can do almost everything (except head the ball) you could possibly want at the position is exceedingly rare.
Davies doesn't have any such exceptional skill. It makes sense to play someone like that at DM, which is the position where you can most get away with just being solid, but to play that position at a world-class level you need to be able to stop world-class attackers from getting the space needed to burn you from range. He currently can't do that.
If he can learn that skill, we're on to something. It seems possible to do - Schweinsteiger was an AM his whole career yet somehow played about the most flawless 120 minutes of get-your-kit-dirty football I've ever seen to turn Messi off in a World Cup final. That said, I've seen Schweinsteiger warm up in person up close, and he was on this whole different level of technical ability along with the Iniestas of the world.
I'm not going to sell Davies short anymore, because I never would have seen him elevating more or less across the board to be solid, but I do think that developing elite lockdown skill may be a bit of a stretch.
Regardless, he can soak minutes against lesser teams and that is valuable in and of itself. You need rotation guys, as the problem with trying to have 20+ alpha dog outfield players is that alpha dogs that don't get minutes can turn into problems quickly.
