steve davis speaks...

[SonkORLY?]

Davies 'could not turn Rams down'

Former Tranmere forward Steve Davies says the chance to play at a higher level of football with Derby County was too good to refuse.

The 20-year-old told BBC Radio Merseyside he thought any player in his position would have made the move.
"If a Championship or a Premier League club comes in you've got to listen," said Davies.
"You think: is this club going to progress my career? Which it is. So Derby was the club I wanted to be at."
Davies' move from Rovers to the Rams has received much media coverage over recent weeks, as the fee for the youngster was decided by a tribunal after the clubs failed to agree on a sum.

But despite any rancour that might have been stirred up by the move, Davies has nothing but praise for his former club.
"Tranmere had done really well for me," he said.
"I always appreciated what they've done - that's the fans and the club. Since day one that I decided I was going, I've always said thank you. "The club knew I was going since January. I sat down with Ronnie Moore a few times and told him its time for me to move on. "The chairman has said one or two things about me, but all I can say is thanks to Tranmere, the fans and all the staff there."

 

[roverstillidie]

Lets see the letter his mum wrote for him because he can't do joined up writing yet and we'll see whats what! Somebody isn't telling the truth and I would back Les Parry over Steve Davies any day.

 

[SonkORLY?]

...but i'd believe munchausens word over that of our lovely chairwoman

she has a disturbing habit of making a scapegoat out of every player that leaves the club against its will, and i always suspected this to be case with steve. his comments seem to confirm my suspicions. he seems pretty sincere in his interview (4 mins worth of audio is on bbc website) and has no reason to publically lie about his gratitude to the club.

we knew he probably wasnt going to sign a contract and decided to keep him anyway, and lost out in a bit of money in the process. we could have offered him a longer contract before he started last season. we could have accepted charlton's offer at the start of the season, or leeds' offer in january. we know we cant rely on the tribunal system to get a fair price on out of contract players. his future was in our hands to a large degree and its not his fault that we put him in a position whereby he could speak to clubs at a higher level without our permission.

 

[Ian]

i don't blame any player for wanting to progress. that's not the issue here. it's his supposed attitude. obviously, someone's telling a few porkies here, but there are some hard facts which don't sit well with me:

1. why did he not turn up on the final day before close season?
2. he didn't say goodbye or thanks to the club (staff, players, fans)
3. he put forward a submission criticising the club
4. claims we did very little for him and the rehabilitation was suspect (this may have been claimed by derby)

doesn't sound right to me.
it sounds like he had a few issues with lorraine, but are his actions justified?

 

[roverstillidie]

it sounds like he had a few issues with lorraine, but are his actions justified?

no. He's has not only insulted the chairman but everyone else associated with the club including the fans, players, backroom staff, manager and former players, managers and coaches.

 

[SonkORLY?]

i don't blame any player for wanting to progress. that's not the issue here. it's his supposed attitude. obviously, someone's telling a few porkies here?

yep, and im not so sure its davies...nor can i be sure its lorraine. all im saying is that whenever a player leaves tranmere under the bosman, lorraine always manages to make a scapegoat out of them by claiming that they owe the club this and that, promised to sign a contract, betrayed the club, the manager, the fans. she did the exact same thing with clint hill, alan mahon and sean thornton - trying to disguise to the fans her utter mismanagement of the contracts of our playing staff by publically slandering whichever ex player happens to have moved on. its her fault he left on a 'free' and that has to be the main issue.

regarding your 4 points: as the end of the season grew nearer, it became obvious that davis had reached the decision to sign for derby county (probably before the end of the season). if this was the case then fair enough to him not turning up on the final day, whats the point? i probably wouldnt either. given lorraines assesment of the situation, im pretty sure he wouldn't have been particulaly welcome anyway.

also, claims made from lorraine that steve didn't recieve standard treatment for his injury are not only likely to be another example of her hyperbolising trivial issues into larger ones, but, if true, would also have been made on the basis of a medical evaluation from the physio staff at derby, not by davies himself. and i rather refuse to believe claims made that davies wrote a note saying that the club had done nothing for him, given lorraines extensive history of talking rubbish, and the fact that davies publically praised the clubs role in his development as a player not long after the tribunal took place. her claims that davies didnt say goodbye to players and staff at the club were also quashed by him in audio that the interview at the top of the page was transcribed from. i just find it bizarre that everyone is willing to take everything she says as the truth without even questioning her motives. over the years lorraine has struck me as one of those people that always finds someone else to blame when things go wrong.

its also worth noting that while lorraine is not good at many things, she is tremendous at communication with the fans and PR, and goes about her business in a very thorough and manipulitive manner. she says things the fans want to hear when things inevitably go wrong as a result of her mismanagement. we've lost our star player because she left his contract to run out, and she still looks like the hero for making a big over exaggerated rant about it. i'd rather an apology than a string of excuses and lies.

the fact is that last season we had a very talented player who was a valuable member of our starting 11 and possibly worth up to £1 million if he were on a longer contract - and now we have no player and £250,000 in the bank. and it frustrates me that for all the criticism of the davies transfer that i read and hear, no blame is placed on the head of our chairwoman who has essentially cost the club an invaluable sum of money (£750,000?) by ****ing around in the transfer market; worse, that she still wont take any blame for it and has to resort to publically slandering a 20 year old come off as the better person. all she can manage are a few complaints along the lines "boo hoo we're such a small club look at how unfair football is" when part of the reason we're such a small ****ing club in a **** league is because until ronnie moore came along she had employed 3 clueless managers in 5 years and cost us not only in terms of success on the field but also a fortune in potential revenue from mismanaging the contracts of former players like davies, thornton, murphy, hill, etc etc etc who could have collectivley been sold for a serious amount of money.

sooner she ****s off the better

](*,)

 

[Boz]

Unsure that anyone can claim those players would be worth that amount. It's a balancing act of length of contract offered over potential, you could offer a promising youngster a 4 year deal and then either they get seriously injured or fail to fulfill their potential and it costs the club a lot of dosh, which it can ill afford. While I'm not a great admirer of Lorraine, I suspect that she would have been the subject of legal action if the things reported out of the tribuinal were false.

Sadly, not many players have demonstrated the gratitude for their chance as Jason Koumas, who in effect signed a new deal so that Rovers could benefit from selling him. Steve Davies' handling of his departure is contemptable by comparison

 

[bring back the cowshed!]

I think we're being tad unfair to Lorraine. We don't know the offer Leeds made at the beginning of last season, but we all know they didn't have much money to spend. Obviously, they were trying to get him on the cheap. The club took the view - rightly in my opinion - that it would be better to have him play for one final season and then possibly lose him for nothing than sell him immediately for peanuts. Unfortunately, we lost out both ways when he got injured. The club tried for over a year to get Steve to sign a new contract, but he didn't. Blame Derby, blame Steve, blame his agent, blame the Bosman rule, but don't blame the club.

 

[SonkORLY?]

The club tried for over a year to get Steve to sign a new contract.

too little too late. stevey made his debut when he was 18, its no good waiting until he develops into a player possesive of ability above our level of football and then turning round to him and saying "hey, youre pretty good, fancy a nice long term contract?"

Blame Derby.

for signing a good player on a free transfer?

blame Steve

for signing a 3 year contract on more money at a more successful clob with better facilities?

blame his agent

for helping the lad find a better club to play his football at?

blame the Bosman rule

for the fact that we got £250,000 for a young player who's contract we left to expire instead of nothing?

but don't blame the club

for dwardling on offering our best young player a decent length contract until he was beyond the point of being interested in signing one (and quite reasonably so)

for publically slaughtering said player when he took the oppertunity to leave that we offered him?




we dont need to know the exact offers that charlton and leeds were offering to know it was easily twice the amount we eventually recieved. the charlton offer was higher than the leeds one, and leeds offered within the region of £500,000 for him around january time - publically. it would be common sense to assume the charlton offer was even higher given that he wasnt injured at the time and had a full year left to run on his contract. for a club of our size, this money is a bit more serious than "peanuts"!

in the months between the club stating that an offer of around £500k from leeds fell well short of our expectations, and the club announcing that they were pleased with the result of the tribunal (£275,000) steve played once or twice. not even considering charltons interest (for which no figures we're ever confirmed) how this can be percieved as anything other than an absoloutely ridiculous waste of money i still cant get my head round.

apparently hes been to a watch a few games since we sold him...doubt he was invited into the dixie dean suite 8-[

 

[roverstillidie]

apparently hes been to a watch a few games since we sold him...doubt he was invited into the dixie dean suite 8-[

Jennings gets him free tickets to the main stand - their mates. Speaking of Jennings will he ever sign a new contract?!:shock:

 

[SonkORLY?]

oh fair play. yeah jennings is probably my favourite player alongside andy taylor...id be gutted if we lost him. i think he might leave unless we get in the playoffs to be honest

 

[Ian]

In hindsight, Tranmere should have taken the money for Davies when it was offered. 500k was a very good offer for a player who hadn't actually done all that much apart from have one good pre-season! Naive on Tranmere's part really. Deep down, they knew they couldn't keep him. Should have got rid of the overrated tosser when they had the chance.

 

[roverstillidie]

Should have got rid of the overrated tosser when they had the chance.

Agreed! 500k is a ridculous offer to make for a player who clearly lacks ability like Davies, we should have snapped their hand off for it!