Steven Davis has hailed Manolo Gabbiadini's impressive start at Southampton, which he's achieved despite not being able to communicate with his team-mates

The £14m striker signing from Napoli has scored three goals in his first two appearances for Saints, including a brace in the 4-0 win at Sunderland on Saturday.

The 25-year-old has been communicating through Saints’ Italian speaking masseur, but clearly the language barrier has not been an issue – at least not on the pitch.

“I think he (Gabbiadini) feels comfortable every time he goes out on the pitch to play and obviously that’s what he’s here to do,” said Davis.

“At the minute he’s finding it difficult to communicate because we don’t really have any Italian speakers, and he obviously doesn’t speak English.

“We’ve got a masseur who speaks Italian and he can translate a little bit whenever we need to.

“Anyway, he’s settled in well judging by his performances on the pitch. I’m delighted for him.

“He’ll be having English lessons, so I’m sure he’ll pick it up soon.

“He’s only been here for a short period of time anyway and he’s certainly settled in nicely on the pitch.”

Saints had really struggled for goals after top-scorer Charlie Austin was ruled out with a dislocated shoulder in early December.

But, with the addition of Gabbiadini on transfer deadline day last month, Shane Long picking up form and Jay Rodriguez also chipping in with goals, Saints have become more formidable in attack.

Impressively, Italian international Gabbiadini has now scored three goals in two games, while Long has netted four in his last seven outings.

“He’s got a lot of quality,” Davis said, referring to Gabbiadini. “Obviously his debut goal was a half chance if anything and he’s managed to stick it in the top bin.

“Today he’s turned on a six pence and stuck it in. He’s got a lot of quality. You can see that.

“His movement’s really good and he offers a good attacking outlet.

“There’s now good competition for places up there with Longy coming on and scoring a good goal and Jay Rodriguez too.”

Claude Puel’s men reverted to a 4-2-3-1 formation against Sunderland, which is the system that the Frenchman’s predecessors Ronald Koeman and Mauricio Pochettino used to great effect.

Puel admitted that he changed the tactics to make the most of a blossoming relationship between Gabbiadini and Dusan Tadic.

It worked too, with the Serbian assisting the former Sampdoria man for his exquisite second at the Black Cats.

Davis, who played alongside the outstanding Oriol Romeu in deep midfield at the Stadium of Light, was pleased with the change back to a system more familiar to many of the Saints lads.

“It’s worked well today,” he said. “We feel comfortable in that formation, but we have to be adaptable anyway and at certain points in the game you might have to change it.

“We’ve played more of a 4-3-3 up until this point and you need to be adaptable in the Premier League.

“We felt we could control the game from that shape and it’s been a good day.”

Saints have rarely had a full week’s training this season, with Europa League responsibilities as well as the League Cup run forcing them for much of this campaign into playing twice a week.

Davis revealed that it was “evident” at Sunderland that Saints had a decent amount of preparation time.

“As great as it is to have games every three days, it’s definitely been beneficial to have a full week’s preparation going in to the game,” he said.

“With games every three days you don’t really get the opportunity to work as much as you’d like on the training ground.

“We’ve had a good week in terms of getting work done there and ironing out a few things.

“It was evident today, so hopefully it stands us in good stead, and we’ve got another couple of weeks in terms of getting good preparation in for the League Cup final.”