It baffles me the regular “ I don’t understand what Davies does “ on here. It’s as if people just can’t be arsed understanding football beyond what a striker and a goalkeeper does. Yesterday was a good example of what Davies does.
Firstly he’s a 19 year old who can’t turn this team around on his own and doesn’t have the outstanding skill and ability to transform a game the way a young Rooney had. A brilliant City side had the run of the pitch in the first 60 mins, nobody was filling in the space or closing players down the way Davies does. I doubt if he’d have made a difference to the final result if he’d started, they’d have just passed and worked the ball around him, but we’d have some energy about us. There was a point in the first half when Rooney had the ball deep and was being closed down by two City players, his only outlet was to try a wonder ball out to Walcott, which was cut out by the full back. Davies is clearly instructed by Big Sam to be the player in space nearby which would have allowed Rooney a simpler 10 yard pass to Davies if he’d been on . He still makes my eyes roll at times with his passing and turning into trouble, but he’ll improve these things .
Hopefully what he did when he came on was apparent. No he’s not going to lead us to the promised land of CL football on his own , and he’ll have bad games this season when the usual knockers will be back in force but for a19 year old still getting to grips with PL football he’s doing fine.
