When the gloves are off, Davis wants to stay at Saints

The 38-year-old keeper and club captain is now into his ninth season at St Mary’s, with his current contract running until the summer of 2016.

Davis is yet to decide whether he intends to play on beyond that point, but one thing is certain – whatever he chooses to do, he does not want to leave Saints.

“I would like to continue supporting the club in some way,” he said.

“It would be very easy for me to sit here and go ‘I’d love to be a coach at the club’ and that probably would be a natural progression.

“I’m still to do the qualifications, and that is something I’m looking into now, and then from there we’ll see.

“Things can change, but I think that, in a perfect world, I would be doing some kind of role within the club.”

However, while Davis might be mulling over plans beyond his playing days, he is certainly not retiring himself yet.

“If I feel like I do now at the end of this contract, then I’d expect to continue as a pro and continue doing what I’m doing in the dressing room,” said Davis, whose 293 games for Saints form a major part of his 679 career appearances.

“My goals haven’t changed. Even a conversation I had with the previous manager, he asked me what I wanted and my instant reaction was ‘to get back in the team’.

“The goals from there were to reach the 300-game mark. I don’t really know why that’s become such an important goal for me.

“I suppose it’s because it was the next goal and, obviously, getting back in the team and putting on the shirt and playing for the club is something I really look forward to doing, and I prepare to do that every day.”

Having held the position as the club’s No 1 for some time, Davis has had to adapt to a different role over the past 18 months or so, as Artur Boruc first took over his position and now Fraser Forster.

However, even when it appeared that both would be ahead of him this season, Davis never considered leaving.

“I had an awareness they were looking for another goalkeeper and, obviously, a goalkeeper to play, so that probably affected Artur’s position more than my position at the time, because he was playing,” he said. “He made the decision that, if he wasn’t going to play, that he didn’t want to be here.

“My perspective was that I wanted to stay supporting the club. I felt that it would have been the wrong time for me to move on.

“Obviously, I’m very proud of what I’ve achieved, and what the club’s achieved in the time I’ve been here, and I felt that if I’d have walked away at that point, or at this point, the timing of it and my gut feeling was it wouldn’t be right.”

Davis, who joined Saints in 2006 after a difficult year with today’s opponents, Sunderland, added: “I think, over time, relationships build and that’s what’s happened for me here.

“I’ve had some fantastic experiences at other clubs and some not-so-fantastic experiences and, when you are on the receiving end of a period in your career which you don’t enjoy, when you then find that happiness again, when you’re enjoying your football, enjoying your work, enjoying being around your team, your family’s happy and settled, and you feel comfortable, it’s a great place to be.

“That’s what I’ve found here and that’s why I’ve always tried to cling onto it with two hands.”

While Davis may no longer be a regular in the team, there is no more respected figure in the dressing room at St Mary’s, and not just because of his lauded captaincy skills, but also his all-round professionalism.

It might be eight months since he last played, and ten since his most recent Premier League appearance, but Davis prepares every week as if he is still the number-one keeper.

“You have to,” he said.

“Certainly, as you reach the latter stages of your career you learn to appreciate just training, being in the dressing room, being in a team environment.

“For me, it’s the best job in the world and it’s important that I stay fit, spend that extra time on my body for whatever I need and make sure that the mental side is focused and prepared to perform, because you know that, in any moment, things can turn around.

“I feel that my overall job at the club is just to keep supporting, keep pushing the lads on and keep helping the club as much as I can.”

Davis has also been greatly impressed by the club’s new manager, Ronald Koeman.

He said: “The gaffer comes across as quite a subdued guy, but you can see that he picks up on everything that’s being said. He’s very switched on. He’s obviously been an instant success here and a lot of that is down to his very cool, calm character.

“If he doesn’t like something, he just simply asks for it to be changed and that’s it. There’s no big alarm bells ringing, or any jumping up and down.

“It’s just a cool ‘I don’t like that, don’t do that again’ and it’s done, it’s moved on.”

Under Koeman, Saints have emerged strongly from what, at one point, appeared to be a worrying summer.

Davis said he always retained trust in the club’s decision-makers, but admitted it wasn’t an easy period.

“I suppose the first thing was that some of my close friends were moving on, and guys that I had seen, like Adam Lallana, mature from a baby to moving on for £20m to a Champions League club,” he said.

“There were some mixed feelings. I was happy for the guys that wanted to go on and take a different path, because it’s a brave decision to take that on, and also looking around at what was the possibility of happening to my club.

“It was tough, and there was always that air of what’s going to happen next? Who’s going to be the manager? What players are we going to bring in?

“All those questions which I’m sure every Saints fan was asking themselves, and I was no different.

“But I trusted the guys in charge and believed they were going to make the decisions to keep pushing us forward.”

Davis added: “Obviously, with the manager coming in, he’s a big name in world football and he’s an experienced manager as well, so that was a moment of ‘Ok, that’s a big step forward’.

“When we started pre-season, the decision was taken for players to leave, and the brain was ticking over again that ‘Ok, who are we going to bring in?’ “Obviously, we’re quite well renowned for our scouting team and our recruitment side and they’ve done a very, very good job getting the guys in to push us on.

“Even after all the signings were made, the bookies still had us pretty high odds to be relegated.

“A lot of the players as well were guys that were pretty much unknown, certainly in the Premier League, unless you really knew your football, so there was an element of risk as well, but the risk is not there if they’ve done their work properly, which they have done.

“The element of risk was taken out with the analysis work that’s been done.

“The guys that have come in have fitted in very well to the dressing room. We’re in a good position and we need to keep testing ourselves day-in, day-out and week-in, week-out to keep pushing on.”

As for what can be achieved this season, Davis said: “If you’d have asked me at the beginning of the season, the top-half , everybody would have been all smiles with that and getting that continuity and push on again the following season.

“But we’ve started so well, everyone’s slipped into the team and the dressing room so well, that we’re looking at where we finished last year and aiming for them dizzy heights.

“I’m not saying that we can’t finish higher, but history tells you it’s difficult to do that, but we’ve got a squad of players which is large enough to be able to cope with that.

“We don’t expect anything.

“All we expect is that we give everything every game and see where we end up.”