Ben Davies has praised in-form Brennan Johnson for letting his “football do the talking” after his Wales and Tottenham teammate’s extraordinary goalscoring run since deactivating his social media.
Johnson quit Instagram after being targeted with online abuse following Spurs’s defeat to arch-rivals Arsenal in September but has since embarked on a run of scoring in each of his past six Tottenham matches.
“Maybe the outside world was on his case a little bit but as teammates we certainly weren’t,” said Davies, who will captain Wales in Iceland on Friday in the absence of the injured Aaron Ramsey. “It shows what a strong character he is. It is difficult to know what someone is going through at a particular time and if you’re receiving criticism it’s not a nice place to be, but Brennan has come out, let his football do the talking.
“The outside noise isn’t something you can control but you can control what you do on the pitch and he seems to be doing that pretty well now. He is still a young player but the hardest thing in football is to score goals. If he can keep doing that regularly, who knows where he can go?
“As a teammate, I’m delighted to see him scoring as regularly as he is and doing as well as he is, but we can see how quickly opinions can shift as well. Even when he was going through the so-called tough patch, it was a couple of games but he was still getting the chances, he was still in the right areas and we would be having more issues if he wasn’t doing that.”
Johnson is central to Craig Bellamy’s plans as Wales manager and is primed to start in Reykjavík. The Wales manager said he had not noticed any difference in Johnson on this camp compared with the last, when the 23-year-old featured in September’s draw against Turkey and victory over Montenegro. “He is a very humble kid, he’s just great to be around,” Bellamy said. “The group love him. He clearly enjoys being here – he always has. He’s just the same as he was on the first camp. He’s great to be with.”
Bellamy stressed he has been keen to care for his squad and staff after the shock death of George Baldock, a former Sheffield United clubmate of the recalled Wales defender Rhys Norrington-Davies, winger David Brooks and third-choice goalkeeper Adam Davies. Baldock, who joined Panathinaikos in May and played against Olympiakos last Sunday, was found dead at the bottom of his apartment’s swimming pool in southern Athens on Wednesday.
“I love football, but it isn’t the most important,” Bellamy said. “The players’ well-being is the most important and that’s where my mind went [on Wednesday night] and it is now. We have players who have been very close to him and played with him for a number of years. We have staff who have been with him for a number of years as well. First and foremost, condolences to his family, it takes you back … I was speaking to his brother Sam [Brighton’s pathway academy coach] at a game the other day.”
