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Davies: Town Deal Just Wasn't Going to Happen
at 07:15:58

Super_Rams - GSE bought Derby during "that" season, PJ was effectively their appointment (brokered by Adam Pearson for sure, but they still over-saw it). But I agree that it's very doubtful that history had anything to do with our negotiating position with Ipswich. If it got around the grapevine that we were wanting 1 price from Ipswich and another from everyone else, clubs would be wary of dealing with us. Actually, I remember that when PJ was boss we had a number of clubs complaining about the way we went about our transfer business (amongst them Tranmere when we signed Davies!), whereas under Clough it's been a completely different story.

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Davies: Town Deal Just Wasn't Going to Happen
at 13:32:00

Sir_Limps_Alot _ITFC - Given the money PJ wasted while at Derby, I'd have thought the board would have been quite pleased to get some of it back from him by selling Davies to Ipswich. But of course the price had to be right and Ipswich took too long getting there. Must be quite demoralising for a player when a club says, "We want to buy you, but we don't want you that much" - not exactly firing the enthusiasm of the player, is it, especially when PJ knows the player and went to the trouble of going through a tribunal to sign him when at the Rams? City saw their opportunity and seized it.

Davies is still young, only 24, if he can stay clear of these extraordinary injuries then he's got a long time ahead of him playing at a good level. Interesting quote from Davies to the Bristol press :- "The manager has told me that I will be playing as a striker and that was one of the key factors in me coming to the club." - almost made it sound like he didn't get that message from PJ. I know when we signed him from Tranmere he was supposed to be a left winger, but he never looked the part on the few occasions when he did play there for us. Telling a prospective new signing that he's going to play in his preferred position is always a good move, since he's likely to feel able to make a good impression there on the new club's fans rather than playing out of position in an unfamiliar role.

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Davies: Town Deal Just Wasn't Going to Happen
at 12:58:38

Why the criticism towards Derby? We did agree a fee with Ipswich, we lowered our valuation of the player in order to do the deal. Seemed to us that Ipswich were dragging their heels for weeks, PJ was quoted several times in the press as saying that they weren't going to get anywhere near our valuation and it was down to us to move the price down, not him to raise the bid. It was obvious that someone else was eventually going to come in for him, City were touted a couple of weeks ago as a potential bidder so it didn't exactly come as a surprise to us when he went there and not to you.

The deal was there to be done. For whatever reason, Ipswich didn't manage to make it. But it's not like you've lost out on signing Kaka, so let's all not make too big a deal of it, eh?

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Davies: Town Deal Just Wasn't Going to Happen
at 11:07:03

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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