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| Sean Dyche linked with old team mate Kevin Davies |
Clarets' boss Sean Dyche knows all about Davies. They were team mates back in the 1990s at Chesterfield and played alongside each other in the FA Cup semi-final against Middlesbrough in 1997 when only some poor decisions by the match officials cost them a place in the Wembley final.
Davies, then just 20, earned himself a £750,000 move to Southampton and his performances there in the 1997/98 season earned him another move when Blackburn manager Roy Hodgson splashed out £7.5 million to take him to Ewood Park.
Things didn't work out. A year later, with Blackburn duly relegated, he was back at Southampton in a cut price deal but he wasn't able to recapture his form there in a four year stay. It included a short loan at Millwall in 2002, during which time he played against Burnley at Turf Moor. That offered little respite until things changed for Davies in the summer of 2003 when he was signed for Bolton by Sam Allardyce having been released bySouthampton.
For much of the subsequent ten years he's been a regular member of the Bolton team, until a year ago in the Premier League, for whom he played over 400 times. Having won three England under-21 caps during his first spell at Southampton, he then topped that when he was called into the full England squad, making his one and only appearance for Fabio Capello's team in a Euro 2012 qualifier against Montenegro in October 2010, coming on as a substitute for Peter Crouch in a 0-0 draw at Wembley.
Back at Bolton he continued to impress and in his last season at the Reebok made 37 appearances, scoring eight goals.
It proved to be his last season. Having his reached his 36th birthday he was not offered a new deal and recently said that he had a number of options from Championship clubs. It looked very likely that he would be moving back to his birthplace of Sheffield with Wednesday but it has now emerged that Burnley could well be one of the clubs keen to sign him ahead of the 2013/14 season.