When I said I could, he asked me what the weather was like in Stockholm, told me it was raining in Aberystwyth and then put the phone down.I had to assure my astonished host that the call, though brief, was indeed a very important one. As I was speaking to my compatriot in Welsh, he was none the wiser.Davies was born in 1927 at Llansamlet, near Swansea, the only child of a Calvinistic Methodist minister, and went to school in Llandovery in Carmarthenshire. The few times I got a chance in the first team, I was pleased the way it went Ars? Wenger told me, 'Keep going, keep going' But nothing ever changed I'd go in on Friday to look at the squad list It showed me in training on Saturday. To get a taste of it, then have it taken away, is hard to deal with for a young lad away from home."I was doing well in training and in reserve games. The next he was on the loose in one of the world's biggest, fastest cities Any teenager would be prone to the temptations Pennant also felt that he kept getting knocked back "I was given my debut at 16, but that was it for ages. "I was small and I was up against these massive defenders," he says.
"But it was a great buzz, and I was used to playing against men from games with my dad and his brothers."Arsenal were impressed, whisking him away to Highbury for £2m when he turned 16 "I was very excited A great club like that - I couldn't wait With hindsight, I shouldn't have jumped at the offer. If I'd stayed at Notts longer, I could have gained more experience and played more games." A case of too much, too young? "I think it was at first The change was too great. The process started in his home city of Nottingham, where he remembers dribbling rolled-up socks around a council flat at the age of three. His father, a former semi-professional player, would sit him in front of the television to watch his own favourite clubs, Liverpool and Sheffield Wednesday, or put tapes of Brazil and Pele on the video.He has a vague recollection of being rejected by Nottingham Forest at nine. Within a year he was attached to Notts County, playing for the Junior Magpies and becoming a YTS player At 15, he made his senior debut against Hull City. Having been released from jail after serving one month of a three-month sentence for a drink-driving offence - he was said to be dragging a lamp-post along in an Arsenal team-mate's Mercedes when arrested - he had to wear an electronic tag on his leg when making his Birmingham debut.But then Pennant has long been subject to surveillance, having done his growing up in public.
I've just got to keep doing the best I can for Birmingham, getting in the crosses. I certainly haven't given up on going to the World Cup."On meeting Pennant, who is polite, punctual, articulate and willing to discuss his aberrations as openly as his aspirations, it is hard to reconcile the quietly spoken individual across the table with the person who arrived at Birmingham last spring trailing a talent for self-destruction.Wingers are accustomed to being tightly marked, but when Pennant came to St Andrews it was being shadowed by the law, rather than the close attentions of any full-back, that made him the centre of attention. For him, the local was the real, and that meant the Welsh-speaking communities which were nearest his heart. One of the quainter points about the running of the Books Council in its early days, I recall, was that a secretary was sent home early every Friday afternoon because she lived in Llangeitho, where she bought a substantial supply of postage stamps for the week following, thus helping the sub-post office to remain open as a vital part of village life.Davies served Llangeitho in other ways, too. Returning to the pinnacle of European football has, however, heightened the criticism that flows when his side falters so tamely at Fulham and Crystal Palace in the space of four days. The Liverpool manager was back to his calm, assured self yesterday, having bristled at every question that was thrown his way in the wake of the Carling Cup exit at Selhurst Park, and admitted that he had made mistakes by not signing a right winger and centre-half this summer.