Saints welcome back last year's player of the year Andrew Davies

There were a couple of things about the fact that Andrew davies won the player of the year last season, the first being that he played only 24(plus1 as sub) games for the Club, the second is that in several of them he was terrible, including the Bristol Rovers game and finally(Ok I know that three) that he played in the portion of the season when Saints were terrible.

Yet he still managed to win the player of the year and deservedly so.

The hope for saints fans this afternoon is that Davies is a slow starter, at St Mary's he took five games to find his feet including the thrashing at Sheffield Wednesday and at Stoke in the few games he has featured in he didnt do enough to suggeest to Tony Pulis that he had anything to offer in their relegation battle, hence his loan spell at Deepdale.

So he arrives back in town a couple of weeks short of a full year since his last game for Saints at Blackpool and the fact that he has played so little football in between suggests that in financial terms Saints got a good deal in selling him in the summer, given that he wasnt fit until December and that another long term casualty wasnt what we needed.

But of course we missed Andrew on the pitch he was a whole hearted defender and we would welcome him back tommorrow, however it doesnt surprise me he finds himself back in the Championship because in truth he isnt quite Premiership standard.

There is one simple reason for that, he is too one footed, never have i seen a professional player so poor on his "other" foot, in Andrew's case his left, if he could use that for anything else than standing on, then he would be starring in the top flight, but you cant get away with being all one foot in today's Premier league.

So there is a weakness that Saints can exploit, in the air he is a giant, on his right foot he is superb, but if we can force him onto his left then we might just be able to breakthrough, of course Im sure that those of you that are reading this after the game will be scoffing and pointing to his man of the match performance, Im tempting fate here big time, but those of us that watched him closely last term no where his weakness lies.

Of course as i have said I would love him in our defence today, he gave us sterling service in most of those games, I wish him well after today's encounter and i truly hope he gets another chance in the Premier.      

Photo: Action Images

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