verlaine1979

Last ten games (give or take) he's dithered and lost possession so many times that I think had any other player in the squad done similar there'd have been a witch hunt by now. I'm not entirely sure what he's done that renders him so immune to criticism, but I suppose that in itself is a talent of sorts. JWP now proving himself vastly more productive, so once our injury/AFCON issues are over, would be disappointed to see Davis a regular starter.

He really isn't. JWP already a significantly better player.

Have people who pick Davis ahead of JWP in the attacking midfield position not actually watched us this season?

Davis having yet another sub-par game. Incredibly indecisive, he's lost the ball several times turning to look for the back pass when a forward pass was on.

Was it McQueen who played the ball out to Sinclair with the outside of his boot prior to the first goal? Great pass, whoever it was.

Frenchman in looking-a-bit-aloof shocker.

Has the potential to be a great player, though was hit and miss at the world cup, usually coming on as a sub and trying a little too hard to outshine James Rodriguez.

Typical stat-obsessed fan. Didn't you get the memo? Davis has transcended the common banalities of football, and doesn't lower himself to vulgar pursuits like scoring or directly assisting goals. Instead, he does his work behind a veil of hermetic secrecy that only the keenest eyes can penetrate. At least that's what I'm told whenever I point out that in terms of measures like key passes, assists, goals and every other statistic we have to rate the performance of attacking midfielders, he's bang average.

I do love the revisionism of arguing that the true mark of a creative player is that they don't directly provide assists, and that all their work goes on in the shadows, unappreciated. You would think, for a creative central midfielder, that an occasional direct contribution to a goal might be unavoidable, no matter how subtly they were trying to play... Sigurdsson seems to be managing it at least, as does the heavily maligned Jordan Henderson, to name but two who aren't Fabregas/Oscar/etc. Davis is a good player, with decent technique and a good attitude. He's also slow, conservative and in recent weeks, increasingly error-prone. Personally, I thought his best period for the club came last season when Poch utilised him as a last 20 mins sub to close things out with a bit of industry.

Interesting, I thought he squandered possession several times against Everton, but redeemed himself with the assist, while against Palace he was anonymous except for the two occasions where he dangerously loitered on the ball near our area. Difficult for anyone to perform well against Chelsea when they press, but Davis definitely looked the weakest midfield starter, needing too much time on the ball and not doing enough to protect it when he had it.

Surely I can't be the only one to have noticed how ropey Davis has been the last 3 games (personally I think he's been ropey most of the season, but perhaps not to the same extent). Great cross for the third goal against Everton, but in each of the last three games he's surrendered possession close to our box on at least two occasions, and has looked pretty slow in possession generally. With two assists against Palace, one from open play and one from a set-piece, I think JWP brings more to the team than Davis already, and will only get better the more he plays.

Assuming Wanyama & Schneiderlin start, why would you drop JWP in favour of keeping Davis? JWP made one assist from open play and one from a set-piece in the last game, while Davis looked slow and gave the ball away twice around his own area. To beat a team of Chelsea's quality, set-pieces could be vital, and we've only looked remotely dangerous from them since JWP returned to the side.

How many of those are convincing attacking midfielders? Cork, Schneiderlin & Wanyama are all reliable and cultured, but by and large are defensively minded percentage players. J-Rod, Mane & Long are wide-attackers or misplaced strikers. Davis & JWP strike me as utility midfielders who are only slightly more progressive than our defensive trio. That leaves us with Tadic as our only genuine #10. To be honest it reminds me a lot of the tail end of last season, when Lallana was the sole creative force in the side. Once his levels dropped off we struggled to score goals, while continuing to put in relatively sturdy, possession-heavy performances as a team.

I understand that this is the *idea* of what Davis or any other attacking midfielder brings to the team. What I'm disputing is whether he actually has this effect, or if in practice he's overly-conservative, and instead of playing low percentage balls or making runs that create overloads/take opposing players out of the game, he more often than not pops the ball back to the CBs or floats a slow (but exceedingly accurate) pass out into space on the wings, leaving Bertrand or Clyne to do the hard work of actually beating someone and turning dry possession into attack. I think I said already earlier in the thread that I know we don't have better than Davis currently, unless JWP develops further - my point is only that if we are to progress beyond mid-table, we need better than mid-table talent, and Davis, for all his many virtues of hard work and Scrooge-like ball retention, is the absolute definition of mid-table.

I base my belief that he isn't good enough on watching him play. The stats simply add a little empiricism to the debate. The through ball figure may be contentious, but the dribble number seems right to me - Davis doesn't run with the ball, he receives it and moves it on, usually in ways that preserve possession without doing much to develop a threat.

Yes, that was an important run, but something of a rarity for him (he makes only 0.3 dribbles per game according to Whoscored.com). I'm not disputing that Davis is a tidy player, highly proficient at not giving the ball away. My point is simply that he's not a very productive AM, which is born out by the assist and goal stats mentioned earlier, but also by the fact that he's average at best in terms of key passes (1.5 per game), shots per game (0.9), through-balls (0.1 per game - admittedly something we're not really set up to play) and more or less any other attacking metric you care to mention. Don't get me wrong, I know that unless JWP steps up, we really don't have anyone better in the squad at the moment anyway - but if we really do have intentions of competing for Europe, we''ll need a higher quality AM than Davis.

For an attacking string-puller, Davis has 1 assist and no goals this season, from 1151 minutes on the pitch. Even is we leave aside the last four matches in which he's played out of position, in his 11 league matches before that we scored a total of 23 goals, to which he made one direct contribution.

Probably irrational, but despite the general love-in, I think Davis is a weak link in this side. A playmaker who won't risk losing the ball is a recipe for stagnant attacking play, and that's exactly what we've had recently. He's very tidy and doesn't give the ball away as often as Vic (though he's made a few screw-ups recently), but in terms of his ability to impose himself on the game in a meaningful way, he's a solid meh-out of ten.

Real lack of attacking coherence, resulting in only four shots on target for the second game running. We attempt to hit Pelle too often for a team that rarely has anyone in position to receive the flick on (Tadic & Mane too wide, Davis or whoever is AM usually too deep). Moreover, I really do think Tadic is wasted on the right - all his good early season work came on the left, and Mane hasn't shown enough to justify upsetting the main creative force in our team to accommodate him in his preferred position.

Did Tadic going off the ball coincide with him moving to the right to accommodate Mane, or is that just me reaching for an excuse?

Attacking performances have been really poor for several games now - four shots on target against that defence at home is shameful.

Need a more progressive AM than Davis IMO. Hides a lot with his passing. Tidy, but pretty much a third DM, making a side that only have attacking presence on the flanks. Not saying he's a bad player, just not the right player for the role he's been given.

Far too conservative in a side that already has two DMs. Also increasingly error-prone this season. Rarely makes a telling contribution, which is pretty much his main job.

Davis is a coward on the ball.

Surely no one genuinely believed we were the second best side in the country? Man for man, City are better than us in almost all areas of the field - to beat them, they'd have had to have an off-day, regardless of how well we played. They didn't, and they won.