I thought long and hard what to write about today. There is of course, the transfer window and then there's the machinations of one William McIntosh Davies. At first, I wasn't inclined to give him any more publicity but then he's such a source of amusement that in the end I couldn't resist it.

I've seen the slow-motion footage of Saturday's little spat on full time and personally, I can't see where there's a case to answer. There's obviously a lot of jostling in those situations but basically, if you can't stand the heat, keep out of the kitchen. Whether the Football League will take the same view, who knows? One thing is for certain though, both clubs will surely be requested to pay their £10000 suspended fines.

For that, both clubs can thank the aforementioned Mr Davies. Our Tricky Tree friends can't seem to see it (well, the vociferous ones anyway) but the last few days have seen typical Billy Davies diversion tactics. Mind you, I have to say that while I've never felt the antipathy towards our friends from the wrong end of Brian Clough Way that some Rams fans do, I've never found a red dog that you can have a sensible conversation about football with. Heck! I can't even say that about L**ds fans!

Davies is a complex character. Undoubtedly a talented manager at this level but whether he'll ever succeed at a higher level I seriously doubt. You might remember that Adam Pearson made oblique statements to this effect when the Rams and Davies parted company and I'm sure it's not gone unnoticed elsewhere in the football industry. He seems to have a character flaw which will inevitably cause him to self-destruct at some point. He did it at Preston, he did it at Derby and I'm not alone amongst Rams fans in being confident he'll do it again at Forest in time.

He seems completely oblivious to how others see him. I wonder how many times he's arrived home to be met by a rollicking off Mrs Davies for making himself look a prize idiot yet again. It seems like his imagination runs away with him in his efforts to deflect attention from his and his team's shortcomings, unfortunately his tactics are pretty transparent.

Instead of trying to do last minute deals as the transfer window closed, he spent the day squealing to whoever would listen and quite probably an hour in Nigel Doughty's office getting a rollicking for being an embarrassment to the club and costing them a needless £10000 (because it will) I shouldn't wonder. At least, if I was Nigel Doughty that's what I would have done.

As Davies himself says, there's been a lot of silliness in recent Rams-Forest derbies. Odd then that the two clubs have been contesting hard fought, full-blooded matches for over one hundred years without any of this silliness... that is until Davies became manager at the City Ground. I wouldn't expect Davies to be able to see that though.

I'll lay a small wager now that whichever division the Red Dogs are playing in at the end of next season, Billy Davies won't be their manager or will at least be on his way out of the door. Sooner or later he'll yet again become too much of an embarrassment for his employers to stand.

Catch you soon..

Steve

© Steve Tickle 2010

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