In our exclusive interview, the former defender and current EFL pundit also discusses the Championship play-offs, Hull City's form under Sergej Jakirovic, and Southampton's promotion chances.
Curtis Davies believes losing has become a habit for former Premier League champions Leicester City, but backs the Foxes to stay up as they look to escape a tight battle for relegation in the EFL Championship.
Currently in the relegation zone with only a point separating them and Portsmouth, Leicester are currently 5/4 in the Championship betting to be relegated to League One.
In our exclusive interview, the former defender also discusses his picks for the Championship play-offs, Hull’s form under manager Sergej Jakirovic, Southampton’s promotion chances and how Philippe Clement has transformed Norwich City.
Other than Coventry who now have a nine-point lead at the top, which teams have impressed you the most this season?
I’d have to say Millwall. I think the fact that they’re still vying for the top two places, let alone the playoffs, is an amazing feat. This season has been really open for anyone to take the opportunity to jump into that top six due to the early failings of Southampton at the start of the season, Norwich who were nowhere near it,
Birmingham who are maybe not where we expect them to be, and Leicester in the relegation zone.
There’s a lot of teams that, in the Championship, you’d say they’ll be a top 10 team, that aren’t. So that’s allowed other teams like Millwall to take it with both hands and they are currently sitting just two points outside the top two. It’s really, really impressive.
I would also say Hull. Not simply because this is my former team and it’s nothing to do with bias. It’s the fact that they came out of last season finishing just outside the relegation zone, and then Sergej Jakirovic came in, who we didn’t know much about, and brought the rock’n’roll entertaining football that Acun Ilicali wanted. But he’s also brought results with it.
With Tim Walter, it wasn’t good enough if we’re being honest. And then under Ruben Selles, I felt sorry for him in a way, because he just had to kind of save the team. But he did that, and then he obviously lost his job.
But what Jakirovic has done this year is rock’n’roll football, but with results. They’ve given themselves a really, really good chance of ending up in the playoffs, and I hope they do.
One of the biggest stories of the season has been Leicester City’s downfall – what do you think has gone wrong and why are they underperforming?
I think losing becomes a habit. The same way that winning does. You will have that feeling when you go into a game where you say – we’re going to win today and nobody’s going to turn it against you.
The way they petered out in the Premier League has had a knock-on effect to this season. Leicester is a really strange club, because they’re in a situation with the financial restrictions, so they can’t spend. But they’ve got a squad that’s stacked with, in my opinion, a lot of Premier League players.
So what you have is a club and a group of players that believe they’re Premier League players, which is no problem, but they maybe think they can just turn up. I don’t really know their attitude. I don’t know the mentality, but maybe they thought they would run away with the title like they did a couple of seasons ago.
I think a few individuals have underperformed. As a team they’ve been poor. It’s a combination of a lot of things, and then obviously you have the points deduction that is the thing that plunged them into the bottom three. But I really thought Marti Cifuentes would be a good appointment and early signs showed that might’ve been because he was firefighting with a good squad, but with a squad that he couldn’t spend in.
But even when you look at their young players like Louis Page and Jeremy Monga, they’re good enough to play in the Championship. But the fact that they’re down there in the league table bewilders me. But now Gary Rowett is there, the main thing he’ll will do is steady them up a bit.
They’ve had a couple of dodgy results, but it’ll simplify things. So when you have got good players, by simplifying it, hopefully they’ll be able to express themselves and come out of relegation. But it’s not going to be easy.
Roy Hodgson has been announced as interim head coach at Bristol City – what do you make of the appointment and what impact do you think he’ll have?
It’s a really strange one for me. In terms of Roy as a manager, obviously his experience is excellent, and he has history with the club. But my big thing is – Bristol City aren’t going to go up and they aren’t going to go down. So why would you get rid of Gerhard Struber to get in a Hodgson until the end of the season?
I don’t really know what impact he’s going to make as he’s got only seven games. Of course I think he can get results, but if you’re not planning on employing him for next year, why not just either leave Struber in place and see if we can turn it around, or employ your next manager now.
But I just think it’s a bizarre one for them to get Roy. If you’re going to get an interim coach in, they could make the under-21s manager interim, or make a former Bristol City legend the interim, that would make sense. But for Roy to come back at 78 years old is a bit of a strange one for me.
Birmingham have failed to challenge for promotion this season. How would you rate their season, and could you see Knighthead moving on from Chris Davies in the summer?
I think the owner is very loyal to Chris Davies. He knows what Chris has done for the football club in terms of getting them promotion from League One. I think the issue is that there’s mad expectation and I think the expectancy is coupled with how well Wrexham are doing.
There are two sides of it. If it’s the loyalty side, then I think Tom Wagner will stay with Chris and give him another chance. I really think that Chris might have learned a lot about himself this year because he’s lost games. Last year, he lost three games all season, whereas this year he’s lost games and it hurts. At times, maybe he was a bit shell-shocked and couldn’t snap out of it. Whereas next year you’ll be a much better manager for it.
But then there’s the other side of it where Birmingham and the Americans, especially those in finance, work a lot with algorithms and numbers and data. So for instance, if the club is trending that they should be finishing fifth by the data, but they end up finishing tenth. Then that’s a decision that Tom Wagner and his partners are going to have to make.
But I honestly think that Chris Davies could be a lot better next year. But what I would say is it also comes down to recruitment as well. What Birmingham has done is sign a lot of good players, but players that maybe weren’t Championship ready. Whereas you look at Wrexham for example, who got promoted at the same time, they have gone and bought Ben Sheaf, Dom Hyam, Callum Doyle and Kieffer Moore.
Whereas when you go through Birmingham signings, you say, he’s a good player, but you haven’t actually seen him in Championship. He’s never played a Championship season where he’s playing Saturday, Tuesday and going to cold places. They’ve signed a lot of players that will be good players, but they weren’t necessarily ready from the moment they got there to have a promotion push.
How impressed have you been with Phil Parkinson and Wrexham this season? Do you think they will finish in the play offs?
Phil Parkinson has been unbelievable. We all backed him to get promotion from the National League with the squad they had, but he still had to go and do it. They had to get over 100 points to beat Notts County to the title and obviously the rest is history.
Again, in League One and Two, with their budget and signings, you expected them to win, but they still had to do it. But I think Phil Parkinson doesn’t get the flowers because us as people that watch football say they should have done it anyway. But he’s always delivered. But the progression of the club has been absolutely unreal, and he’s been a part of all of it.
It’s an amazing job he’s done. There was a time I worried about him a little bit because they looked like a group of good players but didn’t quite have a picture of what they wanted. Whereas recently they’ve been ruthless. That’s what I like about Phil Parkinson – the old school edge. He’s got an old school edge where they’ll score more if they need to. But if they have to batten down the hatches and play horribly to win the game, then that’s what they’ll do as well.
You were promoted to the Premier League with Hull, what are the main characteristics needed in the squad to get promoted?
I think first and foremost, what you look for is somebody that’s going to give you 15 to 20 goals, so you can rely on them every other week to get you a goal. But I think the spine of your team is everything. It helps if you’ve got a centre forward that’s going to play every game, a couple of midfielders and a couple of centre halves that will be playing 40 out of 46 games, as there’ll be consistency between the relationships. Ultimately, you need somebody that has a little bit of know-how, so when it gets to the nitty-gritty side, it’s about keeping that balance of right perspective.
Ultimately, it’s about the unity of the team. It’s great having a team of good players, but if you’ve got a group of players that are willing to fight for each other, that goes a long way. I think that’s what Wrexham are playing with really. A few have sniffed the Premier League and played a little bit in the top tier, but a lot of them have been in and around Championship, maybe made the playoffs or just missed out. So for them to have the opportunity to get there, it would be unreal and the story would continue for Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.
Which of the promotion challengers fits those characteristics the most?
Wrexham are a good example because it must be a hard dynamic when you think that they’ve had a rotating squad each year because you get better players with each promotion and you have to get rid of players that have done really well for you. The likes of Jack Marriott and Ollie Palmer have all moved on.
I do understand it and I don’t like being biased, but having young, hungry British players that know the league, know the way football is played here, it does help with a manager like Phil Parkinson. But I think that’s a match made in heaven that when they signed the players they have, because I’m guessing Parkinson had a big say on the characters that they got.
What are the play-offs really like?
I’ve been part of the playoffs five times, twice I was injured. When I was at West Brom we lost the final to Derby, I was injured. When I was at Derby and we lost the final to Aston Villa, I was injured. I played in the play-offs for Birmingham City, Derby and obviously for Hull.
The big thing about the playoffs is that you’re either a side that has climbed into it or a team that been there in and around the position all season but never quite made the top two. If you’re the side that drop out of the top two, the mentality is a bit difficult. For instance, when I won the playoffs with Hull, Brighton drew on the last day and missed out on promotion on goal difference. But then end up playing a Sheffield Wednesday team that finished 16 points below them and lose in the semi-final.
So it just shows the mentality. You can be that much better than the teams all season, but then if you switch off slightly you may be feeling sorry for yourself and it can easily go against you.
People often say the playoffs must be the best way to win it. It’s a great way to win, but for me it’s not a feeling of happiness, it was a relief. It was a relief because I was in the Hull City side that had been relegated the year before. We had a good squad. We kept most of our players, so we should go up. It was almost like our second chance because we didn’t make the top two.
Once the final whistle went, it wasn’t an ecstasy like winning a cup, it was a phew. That’s honestly the draining emotion that fell out of me and it was because there’s 49 games that go into that playoff final – it’s an exhaustion in your head.
That’s why when I won it there was a gush of relief. Whereas when you lose it, it’s like a daunting fact of having to go again. And that’s really a really hard thing to take. That’s why some teams don’t come back. If you look at Sheffield United this year, they got rid of Chris Wilder, brought in Ruben Selles who didn’t win the first six games after losing the play-off final. So that just shows how much it can shell-shock you as a team and as a club.
It often feels like the moment is now kind of thing because when you look beside you as a player, you never know whether you’ll have another chance because other players might be sold or I might be sold. I think that’s always the big thing that you’re worrying about if you don’t make it up.
Who are your three picks for promotion and relegation?
Coventry obviously is the first one. I still think Ipswich will jump into the second spot. They haven’t been their fluid best, but with squad depth I think they’ll find a way.
I hate to say it because my old sides Derby and Hull might be in there, but I have to say Southampton, simply based on momentum and the quality of their squad. It took them a while to get there, but I think they’re going to be hard to budge now.
It’d be interesting if it was a Middlesborough v Southampton semi-final and a Millwall v Hull semi-final, that would be brilliant. But I think I think Southampton are the ones to watch.
In terms of relegation, Sheffield Wednesday are gone. I still think Oxford are going to struggle, as much as they had a go at it for a little while. I still think Leicester will get out of it, based on Gary Rowett being there and the quality in their squad. I still think they’ve got it in them to win big games. They’ve got Sheffield Wednesday coming up, which is almost a gimme for a lot of teams.
Then they’ve got the big one against Pompey, and on the last day, depending on how it goes, they’ve got Blackburn as well. But they’re going to need to make sure they get points from those games because they come up against Hull and Millwall two of the three last games and they’re going to be playing something themselves.
That might suit Leicester if you’ve got a team that are playing something, they might open up a little bit more. But it’s going to be an interesting run for them. But Portsmouth are the ones that I think will go.
What have you made of the job Sergej Jakirovic has done at Hull in testing circumstances (transfer embargo, several first-team injuries)?
The biggest compliment I could give Hull this season is the fact that they’ve been in the transfer embargo, but the players they’ve signed have been unbelievable. I spoke about the Birmingham transfers but imagine if Ollie McBurnie was in Birmingham’s team now.
McBurnie has been there, done it and obviously scored goals this season. The level that he’s brought to the team has been brilliant, but that experience of knowing how to do it, how to get a promotion, people forget about that. You couple that with a John Egan at the back, who is experienced in the Premier League, and then they’ve dotted around a lot of players like John Lundstram. They’ve also got players in the squad that will run through brick walls so he’s done a really good job.
He had never managed in England. But he said in a recent interview that the draw of Hull City was simply that he wanted to manage in England, so he was hungry to come over here. But he’s done an unbelievable job and a really exciting job for the for the chairman that brought him in.
As a former centre-back, how high do you think Charlie Hughes’ ceiling is?
I think he could play for England, I rate him that highly. I played against him at Wigan when Shaun Maloney was the manager and I spoke to Shaun about him at depth because I thought he was fantastic. I remember seeing this kid and thinking maybe he’s on loan from Liverpool, thinking he was maybe 22, but he had only just turned 19. He was a leader already, which I loved and I love vocal defenders. The biggest compliment I could give him, is that he’s a modern footballer that still wants to defend.
He’s as good on the ball as anyone you’ll see. He wants to play forward passes and get the ball from the goalkeeper. But when it comes to getting his head in the way or getting his body in the way for blocks, he’s got that as well. That’s the characteristic that I think will take him to the top.
I wouldn’t like to compare him to anyone, but I’d probably say he’s a but like John Terry. Nobody ever needed to speak about John Terry’s football because it was just there. He played for good Chelsea side and he played good football. But people used to call John Terry a warrior, and I think Charlie Hughes has got those traits as well.
I think he could definitely play for England and if Hull City don’t go up, I think there’ll be a few suitors that will be looking for his signature.
Are you at all concerned about the defensive performances this season given they are in the play-offs positions, but have conceded more than many other teams in the league?
At one point, I think Hull were second top scorers to Coventry, but they were second most conceded just behind Sheffield Wednesday. So this exciting football is all good but it can’t maintain itself. And at that point, they did get slightly better. But as it got further into the season, I found that they seemed to mellow out a little bit.
They were happier to see out a 1-0 rather than going for the second. Whereas early on in the season, it was kind of just go after it and get what you can. So I think there has been a little bit of a shift.
So, it was a concern to me. But the big thing is, when you go out to the playoffs, you’ve got three games, that’s it. You don’t want to lose the game by a big margin. But the defensive record was something that I believe had to be addressed. They did address it, but they’re in good position now to kick on and try and make those playoffs.
What’s the manager’s message for the next seven games? Can they still reach second place?
The message will never be, you’re not going to make second place, but I think his in-game tactics will suggest whether he’s settling for a good point or a 1-0 result. Especially in games when you’re hearing the results elsewhere.
I think a lot of things will depend on what is happening elsewhere. If Jakirovic sat here and told us the truth, he won’t believe that they can make the top two. Just because you’re having to jump over too many teams with too much quality. So I think his big thing will be aim for the stars, but if you fall at the clouds, then that’s not a bad place to be.
Who have been the standout players for the Saints this season and what have you made of their form under Tonda Eckert?
He’s [Eckert] been unreal. I think the standout player for me would be Leo Scienza. A lot of people talk about the numbers, but it’s a marriage made in heaven when you’ve got a manager that allows him to express himself in the way that he does.
I really like Taylor Harwood-Bellis as well. He’s not an in-betweener by any means, but he’s too good for this level, I think he’s a really good defender. He’s a similar an all-rounder to Charlie Hughes. He’s [Harwood-Bellis] obviously already played and scored for England. So he’ll be looking to push on with those aspirations next year.
The way they played last year, conceding goals always looks bad on you as a defender. Whereas maybe with Tonda Eckert, he might learn from that if they were to get promoted and maybe try do it a different way. But for Eckert to have gone up from the U21s and done so well, they had to give him the job – it was impossible not to.
When you consider how it finished with Will Still, I felt sorry for him in a way. In his last few games, watching the chances they were missing, like in the Southampton-Swansea game, they hit the post and the bar three times. Those were all chances where you’d expect a striker to score at least one of them.
So it seems Eckert has just made them more clinical. But I think the job he’s done is fantastic and he’s still got a job to do so he won’t be satisfied yet.
I hate to say it, but it’s CV building for managers. I think if he were to be able to do this in his first job, and even if he just got them to the playoffs, then he would have done fantastic. Then his CV now is of a top Championship manager, whereas before he was an U21s manager nine months ago. That’s the massive thing for him.
But he has been brilliant and I like his mentality. He’s very calm and honest. I think he’s done a really good job.
What do you make of Southampton’s run-in compared to Hull and other promotion hopefuls?
It’s going to be interesting to see if they upset Arsenal in the FA Cup, whether that will be a distraction. That would be interesting because after this round, you’re at Wembley. Then it’s the emotion and everything that goes into a day out of Wembley for a player.
If they win or lose that, it could maybe bring them up or pull them down. I think the big thing is the Wrexham game, first and foremost, after that Arsenal game, which they’ll have to play midweek. That’s going to be massive, because that could be important for other teams around them.
They do still play Derby after that as well. So they’re playing a couple of teams that are close to them. And after that, with all due respect, I fancy them against Swansea.
I think Southampton have the best quality. Against Bristol City, I understand that Hodgson’s gone in there and will maybe be a bit more solid, but I’d fancy them to beat Bristol City at Saint Mary’s.
It will be interesting against an Ipswich side who have got their own fight to fight, and then last day away at Preston. Their fixtures are set up for them to get there. They can determine their own destiny by maybe beating Wrexham or beating Derby, and then I think the rest kind of takes care of itself after that.
Norwich’s defensive partnership of Ruairi McConville and Jose Cordoba have formed a really strong bond at the back. What have you made of their relationship and who was your favourite CB partner?
McConville and Cordoba have been fantastic. McConville only really came in when Phillipe Clement arrived, and he was seen more as a full-back. But he’s a young lad with good quality that signed from Brighton where he never really got a chance.
Norwich saw the potential to sign him on a big deal. But then after arriving, he found game time a little bit hard to come by. But then all of a sudden, Clement comes in, sees something in him, and he’s in the team, and he’s one of Northern Ireland’s main players now. He’s playing every single game for Norwich, and it’s a great platform for him.
In terms of Cordoba as well, they’re building a relationship where both are good footballers and both can defend properly. That will be the foundation to a promotion push next year.
Norwich have done all of this without Josh Sargent, who left, and without Jovon Makama, who was flying and then got injured. So I think the credit to Norwich is the fact that they’ve done all of this without two main goal scorers and with players who have been in the wilderness a bit. But with the centre-halves, partnerships are what make everything.
But I think my favourite partner ever was Carlos Cuellar. The difference between playing alongside a really good centre-off and a partnership is, you scratch my back, I scratch your back. It’s that understanding that he’s going to do it without having to be told. And I think me and Carlos had that relationship where we just got each other.
That’s the biggest thing with partnerships. I loved playing with Carlos, with James Chester, and with Michael Dawson as well. But Carlos was the one where I had that bond with him that didn’t need to be spoken. He was a really good player.
Jovon Makama is a talented young player, how big a future does he have in the game?
Norwich signed him as a prospect, and then due to injuries and due to Sargent’s issues off the field wanting to leave, he was kind of forced into being the number nine. And then he kept scoring. And obviously when he got injured, he finished up on 13 goals in all competitions.
But to come from Lincoln, with all due respect, and played that well is unreal. So I think it’s really, really promising. He’s got a big future ahead of him. I honestly think that if he hadn’t got injured and even if he’d petered out a little bit, teams above would have been ready to take him straight away.
He showed that he was able to step into a team and take them to another level. But it’s just credit to Norwich, the job they’ve been able to do without him and without Josh Sargent.
Since Philippe Clement’s arrival, Norwich have conceded the fewest goals in the division and haven’t conceded a second-half goal in 13 matches – how key is that solidity in the Championship?
It’s been an unbelievable step-up because usually the narrative is that the team will tire and they’ll concede goals late on, especially when they’ve got injuries. The fact they’ve not conceded a second-half goal, it must be something they work on.
It might be whether they’re able to get early leads or maybe they fly out of the blocks. But to not concede a second-half goal for that long is unbelievable. So I think that’s credit to Clement.
He came down from Rangers, not under a cloud by any means, but the question was what can he do with this Norwich side that’s struggling. But wow we were wrong.
If the season was five or six weeks longer, you’d talk about Norwich in the same breath as Southampton in terms of the momentum they were building and what they’ve been able to do. The difference is they’ve had to jump too far.
They’ve done fantastic and I think next year they’re going to be the ones to watch. You need to be in the best frame of mind, and I think Norwich are finishing the season strong. Philipe Clement’s got a big job to do next year, but I think they’ll be right up there amongst it.
You were linked with Norwich throughout your career. Was there a time where that nearly happened?
It was with Chris Houghton. That was the link. In three different transfer windows I thought I was going there. The first one was after losing out to Blackpool in the play-offs in the 2011-12 season. Chris left and went to Norwich and told me he was going to get me.
It just wasn’t possible at that time, and we couldn’t get it done – Birmingham were not willing to sell. In January, they came back to me again, and Birmingham were in a situation where they wanted to keep me and then push on.
Then in the summer again, I spoke to Chris and thought it was going to happen. In the end it just fizzled out a little bit and I ended up going to the Hull City with Steve Bruce.
The January one was the one time I actually sat in my car on deadline day with a full tank of petrol thinking, do I start driving, because Norwich were ready. But I was there thinking, do I try a Peter Odemwingie and drive to Norwich training ground – as it’s a long drive from Birmingham.
But it never happened and everything happens for a reason. I ended up a Hull City, and I hope I’ve made a good legacy at that club instead.
What was the 2023/24 season like at Cheltenham Town? You announced his retirement from playing not long after the final day defeat at Stevenage
I officially announced my retirement in August after international duty because I didn’t want to go away on international duty and be a retired player. I felt like that would be almost like disrespectful to my teammates.
I ended up actually scoring in the first game against Djibouti and then we drew the second game 2-2 coming back from 2-0 down. So it was massive for me. But that was in June and I didn’t actually retire until August because I didn’t want to go away with Sierra Leone and start changing my mind.
But in terms of Cheltenham Town. That season was a disaster, if I’m being totally honest. Not individually as I played 39 games as a 38–39-year-old, so I’m still out there every week. I still had my legs to go again. I signed for my friend in Wade Elliott, a former teammate at Birmingham.
Then we only got one point and no goals in 11 games, which is the worst start in EFL history. And then Darrell Clarke came in and he was unbelievable. What a guy.
His bit of know-how made us horrible. We’re putting everything in the box, long balls into the box, I’m literally running up and down, going for the long throws, going for long kicks from the goalie, just mayhem. That was our job every week, which was horrible to do in training. But actually, in a game it worked.
We actually took more points off Portsmouth than anyone else that season, we took four points from them, and they were the ones that won the league. So we were able to upset the apple cart and it was fun. So as much as it was a disaster, I loved it. I think I loved it knowing that it was going to be my last experience.
All the camaraderie and having a group that want to fight for one another, we might not have had the quality, but we had a group that gave it everything. I loved the rawness of it and the fact that we fought to the end, but it wasn’t meant to be. I take the memories with me. I’m still in touch with a lot of the boys because it was a great group of lads.
