I can’t be the only one spending more waking hours than I should wondering how Chris Davies fits Jay Stansfield and Alfie May into his Birmingham City XI. Ever since that game against Walsall, when the experiment of playing May off Stansfield flopped, it’s been the hottest topic in town.
The notion that Davies could bench one of club-record signing Stansfield or League One goal machine – and four-goal top scorer – May hasn’t even entered my brain. But there are another two strikers at play – and one of them has a Championship goal to his name this season.
Lyndon Dykes often gets overlooked in conversations about Blues’ best starting line-up, and yet he is a starting striker for a nation inside FIFA’s top 50. Dykes has returned to Blues fresh from leading the line twice for Scotland against Poland and Portugal.
Many of us (myself included) are now presuming he sits on the bench for Blues in League One to accommodate the aforementioned Stansfield and May. And he probably will against Wrexham given the fact Davies has had an entire international break to create cohesion between the others.
Then you look at his international record in recent years. Australian-born Dykes is a regular with his country and boasts a brace against Ukraine and a decisive goal in a win over Erling Haaland’s Norway on his Scotland CV.
Davies views Dykes differently to his other strikers. Dykes, at 6ft 2in, has the presence to be a genuine ‘focal point’. “He’s a nine,” says Davies, emphasising on the nine. “He’s really good and dangerous in the box. He holds the ball up well and has a real presence.”
We’re all racking our brains trying to figure out how Blues’ two diminutive strikers can thrive together. Maybe the answer to Blues’ attacking conundrum lies in Dykes, a player who is nothing like Stansfield or May.
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