Former Premier League star Sean Davis has lifted the lid on his proposed move from Fulham to Everton
Former Fulham midfielder Sean Davis has revealed that he had a medical at Everton before making his “nightmare” transfer to Tottenham Hotspur.
Clapham-born Davis, who made his first team debut for Fulham as a 69th minute substitute in a 3-0 win over Cambridge United in Division Three (now League Two), made 198 appearances for the Cottagers and scored 20 goals, becoming the only player to represent in the club in all four divisions. Although he did not turn out against Everton in David Moyes’ first match in charge, a 3-1 win for the Blues at Goodison Park on March 16, 2002, he did catch the Glaswegian gaffer’s eye in both of the sides’ subsequent meetings the following season.
Davis turned out for the full 180 minutes in Everton’s 2-0 victory at Goodison on September 28, 2002, when Joseph Yobo made his debut for the hosts who triumphed through a brace of goals in the final minute of the first half through Kevin Campbell and Thomas Gravesen and then Fulham’s win by the same scoreline at Craven Cottage on May 3 through a couple of own goals by Alan Stubbs and goalkeeper Richard Wright.
That form convinced Moyes to agree a £5.2million deal to bring him to Merseyside in August 2003 that would have made the Londoner, who was called up for England that year but did not play, his most expensive purchase and the second most expensive buy in Everton history at the time after Nick Barmby. However, the Blues pulled the plug due to Davis’ knee injury and when he did leave Fulham the following summer it was a move across the capital to Spurs where he only made 17 appearances.
Everton News quote the now 46-year-old as telling the Undr The Cosh podcast: “I regret leaving Fulham, if I’m honest. I would have loved to have been a one club man.
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“Cookie (Chris Coleman) stitched me up there, he rang me. Everton wanted me at the time.
“I was going to go, I was moving to Everton. I had a medical and everything, but Cookie went: ‘I can’t sell you, the fans would lynch me, the only way you can go is to put in a transfer request.’
“Steve Finnan had left, Louis Saha had left, it wasn’t that I’d had my head turned for the money, it was more, was I going to get this opportunity again to test myself? Can I play Champions League football or for teams that are fighting for stuff?
“So, eventually I went to Cookie: ‘Okay, I’ll put in the transfer request, I’ll be the bad guy.
“Then I failed the medical at Everton, I had to come back and we played Everton six weeks later. I ended up going to Spurs and that was a nightmare.”
Davis subsequently turned out in the Premier League for Portsmouth, he was part of their squad when they won the 2008 FA Cup final but did not play; and Bolton Wanderers before finishing off his playing days with a short loan spell with Bristol City in the Championship in the 2011/12 season. Last September, BBC Sport featured him in an article on former footballers who had lost millions in investments, along with former Everton pair Craig Short and Tommy Johnson.