David Brooks can vividly recall the day he realised his time at Manchester City was coming to an end. “When I went to sign my scholarship at the beginning of the under-17s, I turned up to one of the awards ceremonies and there were about seven players I had never seen before – all foreign lads playing international football,” remembers the fresh-faced 21-year-old from Woolston in Warrington. “There ended up being a squad of 25-30 players at under-18 level – as a young lad you need to be playing and I just wasn’t doing that. I think the writing was on the wall.”
Fast forward four years and the player who was once so small that he had to borrow kit from City’s under-7s when he was nine has matured into one of the breakthrough stars of the Premier League season. The goal against Fulham in last week’s 3-0 victory at Craven Cottage was his third since joining Bournemouth for an initial £11.5m in the summer from Sheffield United, with Brooks also making his competitive debut for Ryan Giggs’s Wales in the Nations League victory over the Republic of Ireland last month.
That ended any lingering hope England might have had of changing his mind after he was named best player at the Toulon tournament in 2017 wearing a white shirt rather than red following a mix-up which led to him being selected by both nations on the same day.
“Wales happened to put me in it at the time and didn’t contact me,” he says. “That was a bit of a shock and I had already agreed to go away with England, so obviously I had to decline Wales. Thankfully it didn’t put them off and after the tournament I did speak to Robert Page at the under-21s and they were happy to go down and see what I was about. As soon as I went there, I knew I wasn’t going back.
“I spent a lot of time with my family up in Wales and I always used to visit my nana and grandad there. It was just something I wanted to do.”
Yet despite eventually following in the footsteps of his hero Giggs, the boyhood Manchester United fan became one of the thousands of teenagers released every year in the cut-throat world of Premier League academies. He was 5ft 3in and there were times when it seemed Brooks might never get another chance after almost a decade at City.
“I didn’t leave on the best of terms – it was one of them: ‘Go and sort yourself out,’” he recalls. “Obviously there were a few tears and things like that, at 17. But you’ve just got to get on with it and dust yourself off.
“I went to Bolton and they said I was too small so they wouldn’t offer me anything. I didn’t have an agent at the time so it was very daunting trying to go and find a new club.
“It’s not the best scenario to be in but it was probably character-building and thankfully I came through the other side. When you’re going around all the clubs and you haven’t got the physical aspects that they want, you have to impress in other areas. So it’s a credit to Sheffield United for taking a chance on me.”
A year turning out for United’s reserves in the midweek Yorkshire leagues and a brief loan at Halifax Town in the National League proved to be the making of him. Brooks was surprisingly selected in England’s squad for the prestigious Toulon tournament and ended up scoring against Ivory Coast in the final, even if his best player trophy – an award previously won by Alan Shearer, Thierry Henry and James Rodríguez – did not make it home in one piece.
“I put it on my suitcase and one of the lads seemed to knock it off and it was smashed. I had to get a new one sent out. I’m blaming someone else for it,” he says with a laugh.
“The gaffer at Sheff U wanted to send me out on loan to Chesterfield. I think the papers and that had been through St George’s and I held it off for a month. Thankfully I did because what happened in the summer was I came back and hit the ground running and had a good season there.”
The cheeky nutmeg on Sheffield Wednesday’s Jack Hunt in the Steel City derby that still sits proudly as his pinned tweet announced Brooks’s talent to a wider audience in his first full season as a professional, with several suitors vying for his signature in the summer. But it was a call from Eddie Howe which persuaded him to move to the south coast.
“You get a feel for what the manager is about and what he wants for me as a player and it was good for me to hear,” he says.
“That was a big thing and I knew Bournemouth want the ball on the grass and that was a benefit for me as I am not the most physical. He threw a lot of detail in there and as a young player you need someone to coach you one on one. He said he would do that before I came and he has delivered.”
Brooks has similar praise for Giggs and admits he is looking forward to playing at Old Trafford for the first time in December, having attended matches there as a child. But with José Mourinho’s side in town on Saturday to face a Bournemouth team three points ahead of them after 10 games, there will be – as with his departure from City – no room for sentimentality.
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