Billy Davies claims there has been a smear campaign against him in recent years.
Billy Davies
Manager Billy Davies has told The Times that certain people are running a smear campaign against him – and their posts on fan forums cost him in the Rangers job in 2014.
Davies, 53, started his career as a midfielder for Rangers before going on to become a regular with Dunfermline Athletic and Motherwell, but it’s as a manager where he has made his name.
The Scot enjoyed a superb spell in charge of Preston North End, taking them to two successive Championship play-off campaigns in 2005 and 2006, but then moved on to Derby County, where he won promotion to the Premier League in 2007.
Two spells with Nottingham Forest – which ended in acrimonious circumstances – followed, as Davies again showed his ability to take clubs into the play-offs, but his reputation now precedes him.
Davies hasn’t been in work since leaving Forest for the second time in the summer of 2014, but after almost four years out of the game, he appears to be looking for a route back into football.
Davies spoke to The Times over the weekend, and claims there are people within the game who are attempting to sabotage his career and running smear campaigns to prevent him from getting jobs.
He believes it’s absurd that he hasn’t landed a job with Championship clubs or even former club Rangers, adding that he was in the running for the job in 2014, but Rangers officials were put off by comments made about him on fan forums – comments which Davies believes were made by people attempting to keep him out of a job.
“You’d think, over all this time, somebody like me should have had my hand bitten off — by Rangers, by all these English Championship clubs — because I am a very good football manager,” said Davies. “Just look at my record. So let’s not be kidded here, it has been a smear campaign. My integrity and my morality will not allow them to do what they are doing to me…these smears, these lies. I’m going to prove it.”
“In December 2014 some people were touting me for the Rangers job. So what they did was, they hit the Rangers fans forums, and they wrote nasty things about me there. My agent was told by a Rangers board member that the reason why Rangers did not come and get me, was because of these accusations.”
“What they decided to do in their smearing is identify the bottom six EPL clubs, and some English Championship clubs that they know I would go to. They’ve sat down and identified these clubs. Plus, throw in the only club in Scotland — Glasgow Rangers — they identified them as well. Just look at the comments on these forums from certain people, during the process when Rangers were starting to pick a new manager. You can see it clearly,” he added.
Whether Davies’ claims are true or not may never be found out, but Davies may well put himself in the running should the Rangers job come up again in the future, in the hope of sealing a return to Ibrox.
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