Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham side absolutely demolished Stoke City at the Britannia. Goals from Son Heung-min, Dele Alli and Harry Kane wrapped up a comfortable 4-0 win but one player from defence did stand out alongside the attackers.
Ben Davies was playing his first Premier League game of the season and he did put in a great performance. The 23-year-old Welsh left-back had a rating of 8.3 from Whoscored.com, which was the third highest in the team against Stoke City.
The defender was brilliant with his passing as he had a completion rate of 89%. Davies had 51 accurate passes and even chipped in with a key pass during the game against Stoke City. The youngster was also great in the air, even though he only had a success rate of 60%, the 23-year-old won 9 duels and that is some doing when you are up against the likes of Jon Walters and Marko Arnautovic.
When it came to other defensive functions, Davies actually bettered his right-back Kyle Walker, as he came up with two successful tackles in the game and also had five interceptions, compared to just two for Walker. All his interceptions came in the Tottenham half, thus Davies did a really good job of closing the attack of Stoke from their right side.
Davies also ended the game with the same number of interceptions as Walker. The Welsh defender also registered the same number of tackles as Jan Vertonghen, not a bad showing for a player that normally is a second choice at Tottenham.
Davies’ passing was mostly down the left flank but it was equally distributed with almost 50% of his 63 passes coming in the opposition half, thus proving that Davies was indeed trying to get the ball forward as many times as possible.
Just highlighting how important he was to the team, Davies actually had more touches than any other Tottenham player in that game. The 23-year-old had 80 touches of the ball while the next highest was Christian Eriksen with 73. Davies was also extremely careful with possession as he did not lose out on the ball even once.
The defender certainly had a good game but there was an area of concern. His heat map suggested that he spent more time defending than attacking, while Davies might have tucked back when Kyle Walker was bombarding ahead, the Welshman needs to work on this aspect of his game.
There is a great battle for position in the Tottenham team and with Danny Rose giving Davies great competition; it is going to be exciting to see just who comes out on top. With performances like this, the left-back slot at Tottenham is Davies’ to lose.
