Birmingham City: How Chelsea star taught me a valuable lesson - Scott Dann

Jul 5 2009 by Andy Walker, Sunday Mercury

“That’s just top players, he is one of the best strikers in the world. He has done that to many a centre-half, it was my mistake and you just move on. I don’t let anything like that beat me up or get me down. It just makes me stronger and I will push on.

“Now I’m going to be playing against top players week in, week out and I can’t wait, I’m relishing it and I’m just going to work on my fitness for the next couple of weeks and make sure I’m right for the start of the season.”

Dann has come a long way from the day he turned up at Walsall as a raw 15-year-old, who had only previously played Sunday football.

Speaking to the Sunday Mercury two weeks ago, Saddlers youth supremo Mick Halsall admitted that in those early days Dann was a big lump with puppy fat but he had since blossomed into an athlete fit for the Premier League.

Dann admits that he found his early Walsall career tough and almost quit before his big breakthrough under Richard Money.

“Because I’d never been in an academy before I hadn’t trained as much as they do. When I went to Walsall one of the things that they said was that I wasn’t as good at running as I could be. Mick worked on that with me and over the years I was there I got fitter and fitter.

“Obviously when you are young and you go to a team like Walsall, who were in the Championship when I first went there, I just wanted to do well and try to get into the team as quick as I can. I signed a pro contract after a year and I don’t think it was the best thing for me, if I had stayed under Mick’s guidance I probably would have got into the Walsall team quicker.

“I wasn’t really getting a taste of football and not getting anyway near it. So I went out on loan quite a bit and there was a time when I was thinking that I wasn’t going to get into the team and that it was time to move on.

“Mick told me to go away at the end of the season and come back fit because there was a new manager coming in so it was a clean slate. I did that and I haven’t looked back since, I got into the team early in the season and played nearly every game.”