Derby County now seem likely to finally be sold, but their story of financial recklessness should not be forgotten by other clubs.
While the manager of Derby County has been otherwise engaged in the High Court this week, there finally seems to have been some movement regarding the ongoing future of his employers. Wayne Rooney couldn’t keep Derby in the Championship in the end. The points deductions proved to be too much of a hurdle to overcome. But more troubling than whether the team would be able to avoid relegation had been the questions over the sale of the club by Quantuma, their administrators.
Derby have been in administration since last September and it had never been assumed that this would be an easy sale. The club was effectively asset-less after having sold Pride Park to a holding company owned by Mel Morris. With that company having taken out a mortgage to secure the sale, Morris wanted his money back, but to anybody coming in and looking at the state of the club from the outside, it looked more than a little like Morris was trying to get someone else to pay for his mistakes. After all, it was on his watch that the club’s finances spiralled out of control, with unsustainable money having been thrown on a bonfire of wages for malfunctioning units.
But the ethics of the situation didn’t change the reality on the ground. With the proceeds of the ground sale having amounted to little more than some accounting sleight of hand to cover previous financial losses and stay on the right side of the EFL’s profit and sustainability rules, the separation of the club from its home made Derby look like a terrible investment. There were huge debts to pay, a mortgage to service for a property that they couldn’t even legally call their own, and a squad of players assembled in a panic in the last couple of weeks before the season began, which could only be put together when the EFL relaxed a transfer embargo which was starting to look like it could…
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