Former Preston loanee Craig Davies has admitted he didn’t actually want to join North End – and was instead seeking to sign for Blackburn Rovers or Burnley.
Davies joined Preston on loan from Bolton Wanderers back in January 2014 as Simon Grayson looked to bring in a new striker.
Joe Garner was banging them in but Kevin Davies wasn’t exactly prolific whilst Iain Hume was loaned out to Fleetwood Town.
In came Davies, representing something of a coup for Preston at the time.
Joining on deadline day, Davies made the perfect start to his Preston career by scoring on his debut against Notts County just a day later.
Davies endured a frustrating time at Preston really, scoring against Rotherham United in February 2014 and then a hat-trick against Carlisle United in the April.
Preston fell in the playoffs to Rotherham that season, with Davies unable to help North End promotion.
That was the last we saw of Davies as he didn’t return at the end of his loan spell, instead joining Wigan Athletic a year later on a free transfer.
As far as loanees go, Davies won’t exactly be remember as the best or the worst at Deepdale – and he has now spoken about his move.
Speaking to Under the Cosh featuring former Preston strikers Jon Parkin and Chris Brown, Davies admitted he wasn’t exactly excited about the move.
Davies was initially surprised that Bolton even wanted to let him go, and was then unhappy about being sent to League One.
Davies instead wanted to stay in the Championship and join our bitter rivals Burnley or Blackburn, but Wanderers boss Dougie Freedman wouldn’t allow that.
The striker was honest about his displays for Preston, claiming he was ‘average at best’ for North End despite feeling he didn’t need to play in League One.
“I’d done well against QPR and he just brought me in and said ‘I’m gonna let you go on loan to Preston’… I said ‘I’ve just played against QPR for 70 minutes the other day, what are you on about?!’, he’s like ‘yeah obviously Jermaine Beckford is going to be back fit soon and I’ve just brought [Lukas] Jutkiewicz in, blah blah blah,’ said Davies.
“I was just like ‘alright cool, if you want me to go on loan I’ll go on loan, but I don’t know if I’m going to go to Preston, they’re in League One – I don’t want to go to League One, I don’t need to go to League One, I’ve got Championship clubs that will take me’. So I rang my agent, my agent was like ‘cool, leave it with me’.
“He came back and said ‘Blackburn want you to go there and Burnley are interested as well’. Burnley at the time were top as well, so I was like… even if I’m going to Burnley, they had Vokes and Danny Ings who were doing really well, I was thinking to myself that I’d prefer to go there and be part of something.”
“He wouldn’t [let me go there], so I’m arguing back and forth with him in the office about the Blackburn thing and the Burnley thing, he said ‘I can’t because if you go there and do well, it looks bad on me’. I went to Preston and done average at best,” he added.