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Inflation. It’s a swine isn’t it? Money just doesn’t
seem to buy what it used to any more. After all, what does £3million
get you these days?
You might buy three houses in Beeches Road, home of Sandwell’s
first million pound home.
Maybe you’d like to feed 300,000 families with a meal deal
at Pizza Hut. It’s cheaper than buying all the world a Coke
which would set you back £2,173,147,317, a figure that might
even worry Roman Abramovich.
You could get 46,153 iPod shuffles or 1,714 Apple Macs.
You could probably even buy a small town in Staffordshire with ideas
above its station and still have enough money left over for a slap-up
meal and a right boozy do.
Or, you could do what West Brom did. Give it to Luton Town in exchange
for the England centre-half for the 2010 World Cup.
Curtis Davies might not be overly keen on reading such pronouncements,
not having that kind of pressure placed upon his shoulders, though
to be honest, I doubt it’ll get him a moment’s worry.
Reading from the book according to Public Enemy, Curtis don’t
believe the hype.
Plenty shrewder judges than me have heaped far more valuable praise
upon him already, but the rangy Davies, who looks just as well cut
out for a career in basketball as football, just takes it in his
loping stride. Talk on the field, keep your mouth shut off it seems
to be his style.
“I’m quite a grounded person I think, I don’t get
caught up in the hype. I feel that if you start to believe all of
that, if you start thinking you’ve arrived, you start to stand
still, you stop improving and that’s fatal. I just want to
keep on getting better, improve on the weaknesses I have, and carry
on working at my game. I know I’ve still got a long way to
go yet.”
Football was never the only career strategy that Curtis had in his
mind, and for a while, in his teens, it looked as if he would never
get a chance to play as a professional. Perhaps that’s why
he takes a philosophical attitude to the whirlwind he’s been
caught up in over these last few months. Fate could very easily
have dealt him a different hand, and once you have the fates with
you, it’s as well not to tempt them to change sides.
“Up to when I was 15, I played at district and at county level,
for my school, for Sunday League as well, but never got spotted
by a professional club. I’ve always been a centre-back at the
clubs I’ve been to but before that, I played as a striker –
that was the way it was until about a year before I got involved
in the game seriously.
I was lucky that the PE teacher at my school was a coach at Wimbledon
and he put me in touch with them, I went down for a trial and I
signed with them for a year. I was a bit unfortunate, I got injured
during that year, missed a bit of football and didn’t really
do enough to get a YT contract with them.
They released me which was disappointing but not all that surprising
given the year I’d had there.
“As soon as I got the official release letter from Wimbledon,
I got straight on to the internet and got a load of addresses and
contact details of all the clubs in the London area and I basically
wrote a little football CV to send out.
There wasn’t a lot on it at that stage because I’d only
had a year at Wimbledon, but luckily Luton rang me straight away,
as soon as they got the letter, and invited me there for a trial
“I always felt confident in my ability. I thought that if I
had a run where I stayed fit, I could make progress again at another
club.
But playing football wasn’t my only plan in life. I was always
good at school and so I had other avenues I could have gone down.
I signed up to go to college but then I got the call from Luton
saying that they wanted me to join them as a YT, so that put that
on the back burner.
But I was happy enough to go to college – I was only about
a week away from starting when I moved to Luton. I was going to
study IT, sports science, English and I signed up to do law as well
– maybe I’ll go back to that and become an agent later!
“Even though I had other things I could do, like any teenager
I wanted to play football for a living. I grew up as a Manchester
United fan, mainly because my dad was – it’s his birthday
today, so happy birthday dad! He’s from Sierra Leone and United
were the big club there, just like they are all over the world.
I was a big fan of Cantona, loved watching him, but as a kid it
was great to see all the young players coming into the team, like
Beckham, Giggs, the Nevilles. It was easy to identify with them
and it was exciting to think that they’d come through the whole
youth system and got to the first team. They were living out the
kind of life I wanted to have once I got to a professional club.
That was inspiring to me.
“I had a great time at Luton, they were really good to me,
they gave me my chance so I’ll always be grateful for that.
There was a lot going on at the club at the time, a change in owners,
Joe Kinnear left as manager as I finished my second year as a YT,
Mike Newell came in, it made life pretty hard.
That was all going on just as I started to break into the reserve
team and then, because of the changes, in my third year the reserves
got cancelled so I had nowhere to play!
The last year of your YT deal is the biggest for any player because
that’s when you earn your pro deal if you’re going to
get one – it’s a two year thing now – and I suddenly
didn’t have anywhere to show how I was getting on, what I could
do.
That was a worry, but all you can do in those circumstances is keep
working in training, always be ready to play on Saturday or Tuesday
because you never know when a chance is going to come your way.
I did my best in friendlies, in youth team games, I was happy to
play any kind of game, anywhere, just to show what I could do.
“Things can change very quickly in football. To be honest,
I thought it was going pear shaped for me because I’d had two
years and not really been given a chance – there was a lad
younger than me, Leon Barnett, who was already playing ahead of
me, so I just thought they didn’t fancy me.
But luckily for me, in my third year, in an LDV game at Rushden,
our left-back, Sol Davis, got sent off and the manager had to reshuffle
the team. I came on and I did pretty well and that kept me in and
around the squad and I ended up playing six or seven games that
season but nearly always being in the squad which was the biggest
thing.”
Getting a breakthrough into the first team might have been the first
step for Curtis on his way to the Premiership, but slotting him
into the side might well prove to be just as crucial for Luton Town.
His athleticism, his reading of the game and his appetite for the
game and for wins was a missing part of the jigsaw as Mike Newell
set about putting Luton back on the path to the top flight glory
days they’d enjoyed under the likes of Harry Haslam and David
Pleat in the 1970s and 1980s.
Newell clearly rated Davies very highly, for he could see that here
was a player who, the higher the level he played at, the bigger
the game he played in, the better the performance he’d give.
Just as Newell was the founder member of the Davies fan club, so
Curtis has plenty of admiration for his former manager.
“Mike Newell is a very good man manager I think. He got the
best out of the squad last season and that was the big reason for
us winning League One and why Luton have carried on and done really
well in the Championship this season.
He’s great at giving the young players at the club a chance
– I suppose circumstances have forced his hand a bit with that,
but there are so many young players in their side now who he has
given a chance to, players younger than me, and they’re getting
results from his trust in the players. I’ll be very surprised
if he doesn’t go on and manage a top flight club very soon.
They’ve had a really strong first season back in the Championship,
they did really well against Liverpool in the FA Cup, so they’re
heading the right way.”
Looking at him now, it’s hard to believe Curtis only embarked
on his first full season in the game in August 2004. Not a bad first
year either, as he explains.
“Last season couldn’t have gone any better as my first
full season as a first teamer. We won League One very convincingly,
by 12 points in the end, and personally it was great for me because
I got in the PFA team of the season, I won the Powerade Player of
the Year in League One, so it was crazy, a real whirlwind for me.
I was just pleased that everything came together, that I settled
into the team so quickly and things went well.
My aim was just to be a regular for Luton, but all that success,
all the nice things people said about me in the press, they were
just a bonus.”
Four months after Luton were enjoying their League One promotion
celebrations, Curtis was preparing to make his Hawthorns debut,
up against Darren Bent, at that point the hottest centre-forward
in the country. Some leap.
“Looking back, I was lucky that when we did get promoted to
the Championship, Luton had a baptism of fire because we played
Crystal Palace, Southampton and Leeds straight away, two of the
sides that had comedown from the Premiership last year, and one
that had got relegated the year before that.
I was straight up against quality sides and I suppose that gave
me a bit of an idea of what I was going to get when I moved here.
I felt I came through those games quite well, so I wasn’t nervous
about playing in the Premier League, I was just looking forward
to it once Albion gave me the chance to come here.
“I must admit that I didn’t really know much about West
Bromwich Albion, nothing much more than the Great Escape last season
really! That’s about it – since I’ve been watching
football, the club really hasn’t been in the top division.
I was watching the games on the last day on telly last season because
we finished the week before and if I’m honest, I was hoping
Crystal Palace would do it - I was rooting for them, because I’ve
got some friends who play for them! But as it turns out, luckily
Albion did stay up and it turned out great for me!
“The opportunity to move on came earlier than I thought it
would, and when I look back on my career, 60 or so games with Luton
and then a £3million transfer, it seems a bit mad. But now
I’m just determined to grasp the opportunity.
The fee doesn’t bother me, I don’t feel it hanging round
my neck. It’s just the amount that Luton wanted for me, another
club might have just asked for a million for a quick sale or something.
As a player, you can’t do anything about it, it’s what
the clubs agree, Luton knew what they wanted and Albion were happy
to pay it so that’s down to them.
The only way it affects me is to give me more confidence that Bryan
Robson was wiling to ask the Chairman to pay that kind of money
for me. A record signing for a defender, I’m young, not played
at this level, so it was a risk, but the fact that they thought
I was worth it is great and I’m grateful they took the gamble.
“There wasn’t a lot of time to settle in because I got
thrown straight into the side at Sunderland and I was pleased about
that, because the more you play, the more comfortable you feel about
the place. I thought I did ok up there, and I’ve gone on from
there, but it’s still a steep learning curve for me.
What’s important is that me and Clem have been able to develop
an understanding over the games, we’ve played a dozen or more
together now and we’re starting to learn more about each other’s
game. Hopefully we’ll be able to improve even more and keep
more clean sheets as a result to make sure we stay in the team.”
With the Throstles posting five clean sheets in the past ten Premier
League games, things are certainly looking far more solid on the
defensive front these days, not least because of Curtis’ contribution.
He’s certainly picking up plenty of admirers around the game,
Sky selecting him as Man of the Match at the JJB Stadium against
Wigan last weekend – though they did make their choice before
Kuszczak’s save – while others have queued up to sing
his praises.
In an interview with Albion TV, the former Scotland, Leeds and Manchester
United centre-back said that Davies was a star in the making, pointing
in particular to the phlegmatic way he deals with mistakes, putting
them behind him and getting on with the game. Curtis takes this
compliment in his stride, much like all the others.
“Nobody wants to make mistakes, I’m not happy when I do,
and I’m upset with myself when it happens. But you have to
save that for later, after the game, because if you dwell on it
on the field, it affects your game and you make more mistakes.
Once a mistake is made, it’s gone, you can’t change it,
so you just have to carry on doing your job as well as you can afterwards,
then you look at in the dressing room or on the training pitch.
You just have to fight your way through it on the day.”
To top it all off, Curtis has taken the armband a few times already,
making it obvious that he’s seen as captaincy material in the
making.
“It’s been great to captain the side a few times now,
it’s a nice achievement for me and again I’m grateful
to the gaffer for thinking I can go and do the job up at Old Trafford.
To be that high in his thoughts is a big boost to my confidence
and I think he’s getting even more out of me as a result.”
See. You can get plenty for £3million after all. You just
have to know what you’re doing when you go shopping.
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