Kevin Davies retires at 38-years-old

Former-Bolton striker Kevin Davies has retired from playing at 38-years-old

Former-Chesterfield and Bolton star Kevin Davies has finally called time on his career at the age of 38.

The striker was released by Preston North End at the end of last season after helping the North West club return to the Championship.

He has been without a club since leaving North End, so has decided to retire from playing after 22 years as a professional footballer.

“It’s been emotional. Thank you to everyone who has helped me along the way #22seasons,” he wrote on Twitter.

Career

Davies has enjoyed a long career. He started his football career in 1993 at Chesterfield at the tender age of just 16. He helped the Spireites to the FA Cup semi-final, while making 100 appearances, before moving to Southampton and then on to Blackburn in 1998 for a fee of £7.5million.

He played for Rovers for just one season and managed to score just once in 23 Premier League appearances before returning to the Saints, where he was not exactly prolific in his four years.

It was a move to Bolton in 2003 that turned his career around though. During his decade at the Reebok Stadium Davies helped to establish Wanderers as a Premier League side and scored 74 Premier League goals.

Davies was the focal point of the Wanderers attack and did more than just score goals for his side. He created for his teammates, caused havoc in Premier League defences and he finally looked at home in the top tier of English football.

However, Wanderers were relegated in 2012 and in the summer of 2013 he was released, after the club struggled to get to grips with life in the Championship. In 2013 he moved to Preston and despite not being prolific for North End helped them to promotion to the second tier last season.

Rest

There will certainly be a lot of defenders up and down the country glad to see the back of Kevin Davies. His style of play was old-school, often over physical, illustrated by the fact that he is the player who has committed the most fouls in the Premier League.

However, he was also clever in the fact that he is also one of the most fouled players in the history of the Premier League.

Example

For all his critics Kevin Davies has to be praised for his attitude towards the game. He would probably be the first to admit that he was never the most technically gifted, but he managed to make the most of his talent and used the attributes he did have to the best of his ability.

At times he struggled to justify his presence in the top-flight in his early years, but at Bolton he learnt how to get the best out of his limited talent and even won an international cap for England at the ripe of old age of 33.

Davies never gave up on the football field that is why he is revered by fans of Bolton. He will never be the most technically gifted player to represent Wanderers, but he will be one of the players that will go down as a legend, just for his sheer heart and determination.

A bit like Bolton themselves, against all odds he stayed in the Premier League for over a decade. He managed to make over 820 career appearances and is a hero to many Trotters fans. Davies was an example to any aspiring footballer of what can be achieved by sheer hard graft.

Credit

Some may try to paint Kevin Davies as some sort of thug, or dirty player, but he was more like a throw-back to days gone by when players did not roll over four times when somebody tackled them, or when they broke a finger nail.

Ironically Kevin Davies seems like a very affable, humble guy off the pitch, nothing like figure he portrayed on it.

Unfortunately for Davies his career will not be universally celebrated, because he was robust and often not so much broke the rules of the game, but elbowed, stamped and destroyed them during a football career that spanned more than two decades.

Should Kevin Davies career be celebrated?