Curtis Davies Close to Signing With Birmingham City: Guardian

KS edit: via Mat Kendrick's twitter: "Nothing set in stone yet. Curtis Davies looks bound for Blues, but whether it's cash only or cash plus Seb is still to be decided" Thanks, but we don't need yet another makeweight midfielder. We're having enough trouble getting rid of that other one.

As discussed earlier today, Birmingham City appear to have moved in on Curtis Davies and the Guardian gives us some details:

It is understood Villa have lowered their asking price to £1.75m up front with the rest to follow in add-ons. Should the transfer to Birmingham fall through, Leicester City will offer Davies a second loan spell with the Championship club.

That's...not a lot of money, especially considering Davies cost Villa £9m just three years ago. It's clear that Davies has seen his value take quite the hit, but that's a pretty poor return on investment. I'm still hoping to see Davies go on loan for various reasons, but it seems that the odds of that happening are pretty low at this point. Even given that Villa aren't especially high on Davies at the moment, selling him to your direct rival in order to fill a huge need seems unwise.

Still, it will be nice to have his wages off the books and an extra ~£2m (when all is said and done) to spend. Davies just isn't going to break into the rotation ahead of Dunne, Collins, Cuellar, Clark and Baker at this point and it's got to be to the point where any alternative is preferable. It will be a shame to see another Villa player move to the Blues, but at least there's the knowledge that our fifth-choice center back can fill a real need for Birmingham.