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Davies: needed 5 or 6 players

Davies: needed 5 or 6 players


Davies: needed 5 or 6 players

Football Transfer Centre

The former Derby County boss Billy Davies has revealed that he needed at least five or six players to succeed and take Derby to the top level. Davies has been frustrated with the performance of Derby and left by mutual consent on Monday afternoon.

“As a manager you can only identity what you require to compete at a certain level and, at the start of the season, I certainly knew that we had a very difficult task," said Davies.

“The current squad deserved great credit for getting us into the Premier League but I think we all knew that, only with cash investment into the squad, we could possibly compete at this level."

Asked if he could have kept Derby up, Davies replied: "There's no doubt it, of course I could.

“But you have to remember that there were nine players who played against Chelsea who were part of the Championship challenge last season – young players who were brought in to try and compete over a three-year period in that league.

“Once we got promotion it was absolutely clear in my head that we needed major cash investment to go and compete with many of those top clubs.

“I genuinely felt we weren’t in a position to compete but you can only compete with what you’ve got and the board made that decision at the start of the season and, of course, the priority was to sort out the finances of the football club which have been done very, very well.

“I was very confident that, with the right support, staying up in this division could have been achieved.

“What now needs to happen, irrespective of the new manager, the players are a fantastic group of players but they’re needing confidence and support round about them and that will be done with new faces and excellent quality in this division.

“Look at the squad of players that Chelsea have got and the ones they’ve got missing and we can talk about every single club at this level and the depth of squad is absolutely top class and, with no disrespect to the current group of players at Derby, I feel that five or six players of quality need to be added to the squad.”