I think he's taken a bit too much stick for what was a good clean sheet complete with a few good saves. In particular he made a really good double save shortly before our first goal. His distribution was dependable and his kicks were, I believe, what started both of the moves that led to our goals. I also thought he dealt with that awful nuisance of an overpaid striker Sam Gallagher very well, and claimed a cross or two. I agree that he was a bit mad with the back pass from Lindsay and he lost his head for a second which led to him basically punching a blues player in the head, but he recovered well and calmed down. There were a few moments where the Blues were attacking and I almost forgot that Davies wasn't playing and I expected a stray ball to go in, or I expected a fumble. But no, I thought Townsend put in a solid performance.
Yeah, did well for me. I’ll cut him slack as whilst Davies has racked up 3 seasons of experience, he hadn’t. And due to chances of injury etc, he’s not always played in U23s. He’s now having his first professional run out and this is where you learn your trade - so a few mad moments are allowed. Bravo had a mad moment today for Citeh, but doesn’t make him a bad keeper. In fact in terms of ball-playing, he’s of a similar ilk to Townsend.
Let’s be right, long term Davies will be a far better keeper than Townsend. Davies has had a bad spell, and until he works on his kicking he’s going to get some pelters but Townsend at some point is going to cost a few goals and lose us a game or two. He was incredibly lucky yesterday. The double save before we got the first was incredibly poor keeping for the first part and appalling finishing for the second part which basically passed it back to him. The 2 minute spell in the second half was Sunday league standard. If Davies would have done any of that he’d have had 20 threads talking about how **** he was.
Two great saves early on and then a kamikaze few minutes second half . His distribution is better than Davies , and hopefully the competition for the jersey will push them both on to improve
Claudio Bravo is a terrible goalkeeper, but decent footballer. In that city side you can get away with it against a lot of teams, especially ones with absolutely no firepower. Which given what their opposition today are called, its quite ironic that they clearly don’t. Nor do they have any work ethic or desire. Not a Gary Neville fan but he got Arsenal right 100% today.
As opposed to Davies this season. A disaster already happened. Davies been shocking all season and cost us a lot of points. Hecky took far too long to drop him. Can’t keep a keeper in nets making mistake after mistake just because he was good the previous seasons
I've only seen the extended highlights so far, but Townsend was very lucky to keep a clean sheet. He seems to have a tendency when saving a shot to parry the ball into the most dangerous central place possible. He'll keep his place for Hull on the back of a clean sheet, but I'd be surprised if he kept his place til the end of the season. Either way, goalkeeper has to be a priority in the summer.
The issue for me was the defence had lost confidence in Davies. You can't have that even if he is the better keeper. If we stay up I think a new keeper will be on the cards anyway.