Opinion: James Vaughan CAN do what Donaldson does

As we all know, Birmingham City are heading into the crucial stages of the Sky Bet Championship season soon and I wanted to discuss how important I think James Vaughan will prove to be during the remaining nine fixtures that we have.

It is a well known fact that Blues boss Gary Rowett is a big fan of Jamaican international Clayton Donaldson and over the past 15 months he has been very hard to shift out of the squad.

However, since the arrival of Vaughan in the late days of November, the on loan Huddersfield Town striker, who has agreed to join his boyhood team on a permanent deal at the end of the season, has shown that he can play the same role as Donaldson and it could prove to be a very important trait for Blues in the coming month.

This April, Rowett’s side will have to tackle eight games in the space of 28 days, a tough ask for any professional, and having Vaughan in the squad is going to prove to be a massive boost, especially if nobody else comes in before the loan deadline at 5pm today (24th).

Vaughan has shown that he is perfectly capable of doing exactly the same thing that Donaldson does and some would argue that in actual fact when Vaughan played, he performed some aspects of the game better.

There is no doubting that Donaldson is critical to how we play but you have to be realistic Blues fans! The former Brentford striker is 32 years old and his legs might not be able to carry him through that many fixtures in such a short amount of time.

Rowett has shown that he isn’t scared to swap things around, as we have seen with Jonathan Spector coming in for Paul Robinson in the last few matches and I expect to see several other changes being made over the next four weeks as well, with Vaughan coming in for Donaldson being one of them.

The Vaughan and Donaldson switcheroo isn’t going to be the only change that will be happening in the next few weeks as I expect to see Diego Fabbrini starting a few more games ahead of Jon Toral and I also believe Maikel Kieftenbeld could be rested as he has tired quite quickly in the last few matches.

As nice as it is to see that we have squad depth, you can’t take the spin of the team out so I think the likes of Tomasz Kuszczak, Michael Morrison, Paul Caddis and Stephen Gleeson will be in the side week in, week out which is always nice to see.

For me, Vaughan deserves his chance to start and when he does eventually get some playing time, I hope he finds the back of the net because that will really boost his and the teams confidence heading into the play-off battle.

Blues fans, do you agree that James Vaughan can play the way Clayton Donaldson does? Let us know in the comment section down below!