Preston North End defender Ben Davies is set to make a surprising move to Premier League Champions Liverpool today.
Davies, 25, will move to Anfield for £2million, but for those fans who hadn’t completed erased the 2014/15 season from their memory, the name may ring a bell.
Then aged 19, Davies spent one month at Prenton Park early on in the campaign having been brought in on loan by Rob Edwards. He was deployed as a left-back and it’s fair to say didn’t particularly impress. Then again, as a young kid playing in that team, it’s a wonder it didn’t put him off football for life.
Rovers lost all three league games he played in, shipping five goals. He did make a fourth appearance as a sub in a 1-1 draw at home to Carlisle in the Johnstones Paint Trophy. Tranmere ended the season with relegation out of the Football League.
He ended up returning to Preston for the remainder of the 14/15 campaign and spent subsequent loan spells at Southport, Newport and Fleetwood before becoming a first team regular at Deepdale.
His move to Liverpool will certainly be one of the more random transfers this year.
Another former loanee on the move is winger Dylan Mottley-Henry (pictured above).
The former Barnsley man had two loan spells with Rovers and really impressed during the first one. In fact, the run of form when he was in the team from October 2017 until the end of December played a significant part in Micky Mellon’s team turning around a poor start to the season and finding momentum which carried them to the play-offs in 2018 and ultimately back to the EFL.
He returned the following season in League Two spending five months at Prenton Park. It wasn’t quite as successful this time around with nine of his 17 appearances coming from the bench. It did turn out to be another promotion-winning season for Rovers though.
Having left Bradford City last week, he has now joined Larne in Northern Ireland where he joins up with another member of the 2018 promotion-winning team, Jeff Hughes.
