Morrison Vs Davies

In this new feature brought to Vital Birmingham, over the remaining few weeks of the Sky Bet Championship season I am going to be comparing two players from opposing teams that play in the same position.

This is going to sum up who has the stronger counterparts heading into the fixture. This week, we play Hull City at St.Andrews and so I have chosen Michael Morrison to compare against our former player and captain, Curtis Davies.

As always, I like to compare players by using stats. The first of these is for clearances. In 29 appearances, Davies has made 168 clearances in the league, this is about six per game. On the other hand, Morrison has 204 in 36 games in the league. This equates to roughly six again. So they are very evenly matched. However, it would depend on how many crosses they get and how many chances that they’ve failed to take. This is not given in the data so it is hard to compare but they both look fairly similar so far.

They also both have four yellow cards. This shows that they are good at tackling because to go 36 games or 29 games with only four yellows shows the ability to be a good defender and time the tackles very well. This is also shown with a similar amount of blocks.

If I were to compare the two without using stats, I would have to say they are not similar at all. I would compare Davies to Rio Ferdinand where as Morrison is more your Vidic type of defender. Curtis is good with his feet and his passing ability is probably the best part of his game. However, Morrison will fling is body in the way and he clearly thrives on slide tackles. I think they play very different styles of football but they both work equally well.

Davies will have his hands full with Donaldson in the upcoming fixture. They’re both very good in the air and so this will be a challenge for both men. Clayton also works hard so will try and prevent Davies from playing it out from the back. If Abel Hernandez plays, he will be tricky for Morrison as he is faster and that pace could make it a busy afternoon for Morrison.