He may not be the first-choice goalkeeper in the Saints team - that honour goes to newboy Fraser Forster - but he has long been a hugely influential figure behind the scenes for many years, acting as a buffer between the manager and the players and holding great influence with those around him.Ĭaptains of his ilk are old school in many ways, but this was a period when Southampton needed their figurehead to help quell the mutiny alongside the club's most significant high-profile signing of the summer.
The role of Davis as a leader in the dressing room was never more important than it was ahead of this season. Speaking with the people making the decisions at the club, it was clear to me that they had big ambition, and they were determined to bring players in, but that's easier said than done." People were asking who would be coming in? Would the owners be reinvesting the money we had got from the sales? Now we know the answer. The supporters knew that and so did the players still at the club, and there was a period of time when we all wondered what is going to happen. "Of course, replacing them was going to be very difficult.
You build up a trust with people over a period of time, and the human side of a summer of the type we all went through is as tough as the professional side of it. "These guys were big players on the field, and they were also friends of mine. "When so many of the guys who have been crucial to a successful story decide the moment has come for them to leave and they make that decision at the same time, it's a tough situation for everyone to deal with," Davis began in an exclusive interview with ESPN. Adam Lallana was just one of the top stars who opted to move on this summer.
Having been a part of the fall and revival of Saints since his arrival at the club in 2006, the 38-year-old goalkeeper feared all the good work that saw the club recover from the brink of bankruptcy and demotion to the third tier of English football in 2009 would be destroyed.įor many neutrals, Saints' march back toward the top of the Premier League was the feel-good story of last season, yet Davis admits he wondered whether the glue that had held their revival together was being torn apart as one star name after the next decided to take his talents to pastures new. "Another one is leaving," were the whispers that were gathering momentum by the minute, just a few weeks after the core of the team that marched the Saints toward an eighth place finish last May - their best yet in the Premier League - made a very public decision to leave the club that had helped turn them into stars.Īs if losing manager Mauricio Pochettino, defensive kingpin Dejan Lovren, rising star Luke Shaw, midfield talisman Adam Lallana and striker Rickie Lambert was not enough, now Arsenal were about to poach teenage full-back Calum Chambers from a club that looked, from the outside at least, to be on the brink of meltdown.įor Southampton club captain Kelvin Davis, this was personal. As the Southampton players pulled into the car park of their Staplewood training base on the morning of Friday, July 25, the exodus engulfing their club was reaching terminal levels.