Released by his home-town United at 15, Kevin Davies made his debut for fourth-tier Chesterfield when still only 16. In the Spireites’ promotion season of 1994-95, Kevin hardly missed a game and top-scored. But playing wide, he scored few goals until an FA Cup hat-trick at Bolton in 1997 caught the eye. He wouldn’t score again as Chesterfield went all the way to a semi-final replay v Middlesbrough, but he had got himself a wider audience that included admirers such as Graeme Souness.

The last thing Souness did, as Southampton’s manager, was to bring Kevin to The Dell for £750,000. It was soon apparent that new boss David Jones had inherited a forward who was faster than his build might suggest and who had an eye for goal – his ninth in the Premiership proving a match-winner when Manchester United came to The Dell in January 1998.

But he picked up an ankle ligament injury in that game, in a tackle by Denis Irwin, and never started again that season.

Blackburn Rovers’ manager, Roy Hodgson, had seen enough, though, to pay Southampton ten times what they had paid Chesterfield. That was not a good move. In a calamitous season at Ewood Park, illness was followed by a loss of form, Kevin made only nine league starts and produced only one goal, as Rovers surrendered their Premiership status.

The solution was simple: he returned to Southampton in part-exchange for Egil Ostenstad. Somehow Kevin’s form never reached the heights of his previous spell and he managed only 10 more Premier League goals in 82 appearances. In 2002-03, Gordon Strachan’s one full season as manager, he was loaned to second-tier Millwall and made only one start for Southampton – in a 6-1 defeat at Highbury. He badly bruised his foot in that game, thereby giving Strachan a reason to omit him from the FA Cup Final squad 10 days later. Strachan’s next move was to sell him to Bolton. Davies explained to the Independent that this “was because of something personal between him and me.” Whatever that was, Kevin put it behind him during nine Premiership seasons in which he never made fewer than 30 appearances.

He didn’t score a bundle of goals (67 in 316) but it would be rare to see TV highlights of a Bolton game in which Kevin was not cushion-heading on to a team-mate. The Bolton fans approved, three times voting him their Player-of-the-Year. And in October 2010, he played the last 20 minutes – as a sub for Peter Crouch – in a Euro 2012 qualifier v Montenegro at Wembley, making him the oldest England debutant, at 33 years and 200 days, since Leslie Compton in 1950. He finished his career at Preston and then moved into management with Southport, although that lasted little more than six months. In Aug 2018 he and his family relocated to Sandbanks in Dorset and in 2020 he set up his own player agency.