Good Luck Simon!

So after weeks of transfer speculation Simon Davies has finally left Everton this week and made a move to Fulham for an undisclosed fee. The promise of first team football and an opportunity to work with Chris Coleman was clearly too attractive a proposition for Davies to turn down. For followers of Welsh International football it’s good to see him move to another Premiership team and not drop a division the way Carl Fletcher, Robert Earnshaw and Jason Koumas all did when first team action wasn’t available to them. It’s a good move for him, especially for his flagging confidence. After one and a half seasons at Everton it must feel nice to be wanted again.

As a Welsh Evertonian it’s always great to see a fellow countryman grace the pitch at Goodison Park. From Kevin Ratcliffe to Neville Southall to Barry Horne to Gary Speed to John Oster to Mark Hughes to Mark Pembridge we’ve always had a Welshman in the first team since I’ve supported Everton. I imagined Simon Davies would have followed in this tradition and upon his arrival at Everton in mid 2005 there seemed to be no obvious reason why he wouldn’t establish himself a regular. He had been frequently linked with Everton for some time before his move and along with Sean Davis, Simon Davies had become an elusive transfer target for David Moyes. The amount of time the club had spent tracking his progress and availability suggested Moyes saw Davies as a vital part of the team he was putting together so when negotiations were complete I genuinely hoped and expected great things.

It just didn’t happen…

Injuries would probably be the main contributing factor. He did have his fair share of them during his spell at Everton, as he did at Spurs. It seemed to be more psychological than physical with Simon Davies. Like most players who face a crisis in confidence it’s a slow process. With every poor performance the belief is increasingly sapped away. The mistakes become a regular part of the player’s game. The more passes that go astray, the more ideas that don’t come off, the more shots that go off target. Then the crowd can begin to single you out. I spoke to an Everton season ticket holder before Christmas and he informed me that Davies had become a target for abuse by some of the fans. Every time a game would not be going Everton’s way a section of fans would proceed to vent their anger at him. It’s hard to hear that when it’s a player you really wanted to succeed.

This isn’t to say he never played well for Everton. We perhaps brought him in to add a bit of flair and pace to the team but as his first season turned out he had to do a bit of the ugly stuff as well which to be fair he has never avoided whenever I’ve seen him play for Wales. But anyway he’s gone now, leaving many Everton fans wondering why exactly David Moyes pursued him for so long only to sell him after eighteen months. Was he quite simply not the player Moyes thought he was? Who knows?

So all the best at Fulham Simon, hope you regain the form that got you noticed in the first place and start doing the business for Wales again (and please don’t do the usual thing when a player moves on and score a blinder from 40 yards the first time you return to your old club!)