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Aston Villa captain Jack Grealish has given massive credit to teammate Keinan Davis for his all-round game, claiming that he is “unbelievable” at holding the ball up as a target man.

Davis is a 6t 3in centre-forward that has been with the Midlands club for five years and has made 71 first-team appearances for them.

The 22-year-old is an old fashioned striker with plenty of positive attributes to his game, but it’s hard to overlook the fact he’s scored just five goals for the Midlands club at senior level.

With Ollie Watkins firing as the first-choice Villa forward this season, he’s been very much out of the picture and three of his four appearances have been in the Carabao Cup

His only Premier League appearance was off the bench on the opening day against Sheffield United, but Grealish rates him highly despite not starting a league fixture all season and has just said he needs to improve his end product.

“It should a million per cent be Keinan Davis,” Grealish responded when asked the strongest person in the squad, as quoted by Soccer AM’s Youtube account.

“He’s so, so strong. He’s one of the best hold up players I’ve actually played with and that includes the likes of [Christian] Benteke. He is unbelievable.

“The only thing that he needs to add to his game is his end product and he knows that he needs to improve on that. But I can’t give him enough credit for how good he is just in the game, holding the ball up, his dribbling for a big fellow.”

TBR’s View:

Despite being aged just 22, it’s hard to picture Davis carving out a future at Aston Villa based off his recent years at the club and he just doesn’t look like a natural finisher around the penalty area.

Dean Smith’s side should consider loaning him out in the New Year and signing a back-up striker to replace, or potentially sell him if a possible suitor becomes available.

Villa are a club that want to be ambitious moving forward to establish themselves in the top half of the Premier League and they are going to need serious squad depth to achieve that goal.