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Davies: Town Deal Just Wasn't Going to Happen
Davies: Town Deal Just Wasn't Going to Happen
Tuesday, 21st Aug 2012 09:44

Striker Steve Davies says Town continued to show interest in him right up to him signing for Bristol City yesterday, but he felt the proposed switch was taking too long and that Derby County didn’t want to do a deal with the Blues. Town had been in negotiations with the Rams regarding the 24-year-old since May but without being able to agree a fee.

While flattered by the Blues’ interest, Davies said he got the impression that a move to Portman Road just wasn’t going to happen: "I knew about City's interest two weeks ago and I had a call from Derby late on Sunday night to say they had given me permission to speak to them.

"I spoke to the manager for about half an hour, he told me his plans for the club and knew then that I wanted to be a part of it.

"I could have still gone to Ipswich up until 10 minutes before I signed, but that had gone on for a little bit too long and I just had a good feeling about Bristol City.

"I'm grateful for Ipswich for their interest, but I'm not too sure Derby were keen on doing a deal with them."

Davies, who Town boss Paul Jewell brought to Pride Park from Tranmere during his spell as manager there, has signed a three-year contract at Ashton Gate, the Robins and Rams having agreed a fee believed to be £750,000.


Photo: Action Images



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Michael11 added 09:54 - Aug 21
Sounds to me like we waited until 10 minutes before he was going to sign for another club to make the offer Derby wanted for him, what is the point? If we were prepared to pay that then why didn't we do it two months ago!
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KembleBlue added 09:57 - Aug 21
Interesting comment, you really did get the impression Derbydidn't want him to sign for us?

Wish him, luck real shame as think he would, for 3/4m been a great signing. Kind of nice for him to come out and say that.
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TownOnTheUp added 09:59 - Aug 21
What I don't understand is that the valuation that was rumoured was in the area of £1million. When that was the case it made sense that maybe we wouldn't go that far. If we weren't even offering £750,000 then that seems very cheap of us and makes me question the ambition of Evans. The spiel about no set transfer budget, the owner coughing up for the right player, etc, comes to mind.

The only thing I can think is that £750,000 figure includes an add-on based on appearance (which would make sense when trying to sign an injury hit player), that takes the fee closer to the £1million. Even so, for someone who was clearly a major target, to miss out on him is disappointing.

I'm hopeful that we have another target in mind and I hope we haven't passed up a really good player. Time will tell.
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brian_a_mul added 10:02 - Aug 21
Its clear Derby diddnt want to sell to a rival club.
Town and Derby have same ambitions of making playoffs while Bristol City are likely to be in a relegation scrap for much of the season.
Plus IMO, PJ was a former manager at County (as diddnt do too well) they were reluctant to do a deal with him.

Davis diddnt seem too bothered to come here. I think we are better off!!
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muhrensleftfoot added 10:03 - Aug 21
Sounds like our fannying around trying to squeeze every last penny from the deal has rather upset Derby, and we've lost a potentially great signing. Thank you Messrs Evans & Clegg! I know we're talking loads of money, but in football terms that was "spoiling the ship for a ha'porth of tar" to use an old saying.
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alfromcol added 10:07 - Aug 21
Let's wait until we hear the ITFC version of events before we come to any conclusions
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budgiebasher added 10:11 - Aug 21
Agree with Muhrensleftfoot. Reading between the lines Derby got pissed off with our rubbish negotiating tactics (as did Davies). Clegg is not a commercial negotiator and is learning on the hoof. He's gone from paying whatever someone asks to trying to be hardnosed and failing badly. Guess Jewel must be pretty unhappy about missing out on his top target over nothing but Clegg's crap tactics. A bit embarrassing for him as well given his recent comments which made it clear he was in the bag. Don't know enough about Davies to comment on his value or worth but our dealings in the transfer market continue to let us down
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evansblue added 10:25 - Aug 21
£750k seems a pretty fair price for a 24 year old and I am not sure when that sort of fee became a hurdle for us. Our Manager obviously rates him given he has tried to sign him for a 2nd time and chased him for several months so I think your comments are pretty accurate Muhrensleft foot. I also doubt many clubs see us as a play off rival I am afraid. Maybe in a few years time but certainly not at present.
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Lesta_Tractor added 10:27 - Aug 21
perhaps they didn't want to sell PJ, he probably upset them with his abject failure whilst at Pride Park.
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oldbri added 10:27 - Aug 21
I am beggining to think that unless a player is for nothing or next to nothing,it aint going to happen.I feel sorry for Paul Jewel because I think the fault lies with others.This would have been a very good signing.
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Warkys_Tash added 10:28 - Aug 21
I also agree with muhrensleftfoot. Poor negotiation skills from (presumably) Clegg, has left us high and dry once again and probably annoyed Derby to a point that they were then determined they wouldn't sell him to us.

ITFC is becoming a joke, how many more times do we not land our first choice targets?

Davies is a quality player, the right age and just what we needed - judging from what I witnessed on Saturday (no aerial threat in open play) The previous manager bemoaned the club 'not getting the deals done' - I wonder what PJ is secretly thinking about this latest transfer debacle. Another well documented failure that has dragged on and on and on...
IF Clegg is responsible for this failure then he should resign. FURIOUS, FUMING, SEETHING, DISAPPOINTED, ANGRY.

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Nthsuffolkblue added 10:31 - Aug 21
The little I do know of Davies is that he has missed a lot of games through injuries. I would be very surprised if he was our "top" target although he is the one that the press got wind of and so have repeatedly dragged up time and again all summer. We may well have been pursuing Edu even longer. I think Chambers was a bigger target than Davies. We could do with another striker but I think Jewell still sees another centre back as more urgent. The main thing I hope we have learnt as a club is not to pin all our hopes on one target (aka Chopra or Bullard) as they won't necessarily repeat past performances. For Town to pay anything more than £500K for a player of Davies' injury record would be rash and likely come back to bite us in the bum. I could understand a fee around £400K with add-ons taking it to £750K but we appear to like to get fees paid wherever possible and there is a good argument for that.
Does Davies' comments that Derby didn't seem to want to do a deal with us suggest we are seen as a closer rival to them than BC? I would guess so.
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Bergholtblue added 10:34 - Aug 21
These deals are not always as straight forward as they appear. It is not just about the fee but whether this is paid in full or in installments; and if the latter, what the timescale of the installments are. Then you can add in trigger payments on appearances, performance etc.

I am not one to have a go a Clegg for very frustration that Town suffers, but this one does look to sit squarely on his shoulders.

Jewell knows we need a striker, he has found someone who he knows, worked with an was available. He would have come here too.

I think that Derby didn't want him to come here is a bit of a red herring. I am sure that it was just that the deal on the table was not to Derby's liking .
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oldbluestu added 10:45 - Aug 21
I'm more interested in the comment "but I'm not too sure Derby were keen on doing a deal with them" maybe Derby were asking for more money from Ipswich than they were Bristol?

Or possibly they felt Ipswich have more of a chance of challenging for a top 6 finish and didn't want to sell to us. It's happened many times before in football when one club doesn't want to sell to another club unless it's the only option
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alfromcol added 10:45 - Aug 21
What a lot of tosh some people post on here. No one knows what went on during the negotiations so how can individuals be blamed for the breakdown. Patience folks, we already have the basis of a very good team, the rest will fall into place.
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Pessimistic added 10:45 - Aug 21
I agree oldbri, the fault lies not with P.J. especially but with Simon Says. He is our chief negotiator and just listening to him in interviews, lowlighting his lack of football knowledge only confirms what we already know. Clegg is clearly out of his depth.
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PauloJulio added 11:04 - Aug 21
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RFIP added 11:07 - Aug 21
Rams fan in peace here.

From the wording in the article above, it seems that Derby did indeed accept an offer from Ipswich, since Davies was contacted by the club on Sunday to tell him that Ipswich had permission to speak to him. Also, Davies tweeted on Sunday evening that Monday was going to be a big day and he was excited at the prospect (my paraphrase), so he knew a definite deal with someone was close at hand.

Ultimately, if 2 clubs have bids accepted by the selling club then it's down to the player and his agent to decide who to sign for. Reading Davies' comments above, it sounds like he himself was a bit unhappy with the amount of time it was taking to sort the deal with Ipswich. I know he was frustrated because he'd had no game time in pre-season as he wasn't going to be part of the squad, so for him the sooner he could get out the better. Derby were keen to sell within this transfer window and we came down from our initial £1m valuation (which was always optimistic given Davies injury record), so the deal was there to be done. Davies says he had a good feeling about Bristol City - possibly because they didn't haggle for weeks over how much they would or wouldn't pay for him, or possibly because the City negotiating team sold the deal to him better, and it could have gone either way until 10 minutes before he signed for City. Maybe, since Davies has left Derby citing "personal reasons", the move to Bristol just suits him better in terms of geography.

Bristol are getting a player who, if he can stay fit, is probably one of the better forwards in the Championship - he's just not had the chance to show it over a prolonged run of games. He will score goals. Really felt sorry for him last year when he'd had a good pre-season and was playing well and scoring, then got a fractured skull. I don't know how many black cats he happened acrossat some time in his life, but at times it seemed like he was jinxed. I really hope he's over it all now, and I'd have preferred to see him stay at Derby, but everything changes and we all move on. As long as he doesn't add himself to the long list of former Derby players who return to score against us (we even have a former keeper who scored against us - how many clubs can say that?!!?!?)
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JewellintheTown added 11:20 - Aug 21
Move on, nothing to see here.
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backwiththeboysagain added 11:21 - Aug 21
Frustrating we never got him, but now PJ and Co. can now get someone similar in asap. Amazes me how we always miss out on alot of our targets.
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EatonBlue added 11:44 - Aug 21
As Derby and Town could not agree a fee the Bristol offer was the only one on the table.
I hope that Town's offer included part of the fee deferred and based on appearances because that is the sensible thing to do when a player has a bad injury record.
And another thing . . Davies said that he wanted to move nearer London but Bristol is about 90 minutes by train from London (same as Derby) whereas the train journey from Ipswich to London is just over 1 hour.
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StanwayBlue added 11:45 - Aug 21
There seem to be alot of assumptions on here! We do not know how negotiations went, or the Derby position on dealing with us (rivalry, PJ's history with them etc). How can we blame Clegg when we don't know what went on?

Time to move on and stop talking about Davies.
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Stato added 11:52 - Aug 21
Although many on here dislike any form of criticism of the club management or team performance the fact is that too many of our transfer targets have slipped through our fingers. The club have sent out mixed messages as to whether its Evans or Clegg who are handling these matters but either way it is disappointing how badly we have performed in landing identified targets. Yes the club should have a budget and yes we shouldn't exceed our valuation of a players transfer value and wage demands but why do so many players seem to slip through our fingers and why does our transfer kitty seem so much smaller than clubs that appear to have less resource than us. If we can only afford young kids and players from lower division why don't we stick to chasing those targets rather than enter a season so light a squad compared to the teams we are trying to compete against.
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WickedBlue added 11:57 - Aug 21
Gutted think he could be a real gem. As for questioning Evans ambition when you have spent as much as that man on the club then you can question him until then you sound a right tw@t so keep schtum.
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JustSpivvyChops added 12:02 - Aug 21
I've been disappointed by some of the targets that have eluded us in recent years, but in all honesty, I am quite pleased that this long term sicknote has gone elsewhere. ME and SC are tightening the purse strings more and more in line with their policy around FFP and the perceived effect on the club, so we really can't afford to be spending the limited budget that it is available on a target that may spend a good portion of his contract on the physio's table.

Now's the sort of time that we can expect to be haggling for players that don't make the final premier league squads, so i'm sure there'll be some good loans to be had and we normally pick up a gem or two (Luongo ais lready doing his bit).
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