Wenger Gave Me Back My Pride Says Billy Davis

Aug 17 2008 Gordon Waddell

BILLY DAVIES has spent 10 months feeling the crunch of gravel under his feet, watching ash park amateurs for his football fix.

But a conversation with Arsene Wenger has convinced Davies he's ready to put a stud back into the green and unpleasant land of England's Premier League.

The 44-year-old was shamefully sacked as boss of Derby County last November, just 14 games after getting them promoted to the promised land and swelling their coffers to the tune of £60million.

Davies has given his pay-off a proper pounding though, jetting his family around the world while he can - because he always knew that feeling of unfinished business would get him in the end. Refreshed, reinvigorated, he's now back in the starting blocks and waiting for another board to pull the trigger.

He told Mail Sport: "It's the first pre-season I've missed in 29 years - and the irony is it came on the back of my biggest success.

"And the way it happened still sticks. I got a phone call on the bus on the way down to London to play Spurs to mark my card, telling me Paul Jewell had been tapped up to take my job. That was before the THIRD game of the season."

That was one of the lowest points for Davies but he admits Arsenal boss Wenger's words were the pick-me-up he needed.

Davies said: "I was in London working for Sky and turned out to be sharing a hotel with Arsene.

"We got chatting in the gym in the morning and he said to me 'You were a victim of your own success.

'It's not always the right thing to do, getting a team promoted - sometimes you're better getting near but not so far.' "What he meant was you then maybe get the chance to move on to an established Premiership club and you have a better chance.

"David Moyes is a perfect example. He's done superbly moving from Preston to Everton - but they were a club well entrenched in the Premier league.

"I went into the Premiership with Derby - no European scouts, no structure, not enough staff, no video analysis, a small squad. But what a compliment for a guy like Wenger to have noticed.

"When we played them, his programme notes were amazing. He said after what I had achieved, I clearly had something special.

"An unbelievable pat on the back - right before they won 5-0."

Davies is constantly linked with job vacancies, although he backed away from the Scotland running and was vague about talk in the summer of the Hearts post.

He said the right job has yet to turn up - but insists he won't sell his soul for any new position.

Billy said: "I will not be a shadow over the back of a manager.

"I won't go to games and sit near anyone who is supposedly under pressure. I know how that feels.

"But I'm actively pursuing work. I'm refreshed and ready."

The break from the game has restored him. For six months he devoted himself to his family, travelled the world and letting time repair the damage to his body and mind.

Davies said: "Apart from a wee bit of media work, I never watched one game. Instead I spentmy weekends or evenings at places like Linwood or Greenock, watching my boys, William and Mark, who are 17 and 15, train and play.

"I'd watch them on the darkest, dreariest gravel pitches that I'd played back in the good old days.

"Boys football, taking nothing to do with anything, just being there, maybe giving a bit of advice here and there. But that was it.

"Being a manager is the hardest job in the world with pressure and interference from all angles.

"But I have unfinished business in the Premier League.

"I'll wait until a board decides to change their manager and if it's the right club with the right people and the right ambition, I'll sit down and look at it.

"It's important to make the right choice, not take the first offer and go to the wrong place.

"It's my burning desire. Because of what happened, I want to get back. I'm full of drive and spirit to do the job again. I cannot wait."