Preston North End manager Alex Neil has said Liverpool ‘blew everything out of the water’ when they made their surprise deadline day swoop for centre-back Ben Davies, as reported by the Lancashire Post.
The Reds signed the 25-year-old, who had amassed 145 appearances for the Championship club, for £1.6m, and Neil says that fee was gratefully received as the defender was in the final months of his contract.
Davies watched on as Jurgen Klopp’s side suffered back-to-back defeats at a previously impenetrable Anfield, although his former boss had expected the former Tranmere loanee to go elsewhere. Neil said [via Lancashire Post]:
To my knowledge, the deal with Celtic was the one he was going to do and that is where he was going to end up.
From the discussions I had with Ben, I anticipated him staying with us until the end of the season. Then Liverpool came in and that blew everything out of the water for two reasons.’
Those two reasons were Liverpool’s generosity in offering a ‘good fee’ for the defender, and that Neil couldn’t deny the Barrow-born player an opportunity to join the world club champions.
The Preston manager went to speak of an “incredible” couple of days for Davies, who he described as a “real quality centre-back”. [Lancashire Post]
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With Davies and Ozak Kabak signed within hours of one another amid links to a plethora of alternatives, those final 48 hours of the transfer window were a whirlwind for all involved, nobody more so than the players themselves.
With the dust now settled and Klopp in desperate need of ready-to-go central defenders, Davies might find himself thrust into the limelight in the very near future.
