Derby County- a great club in trouble, Clough and Taylor

Derby County - a great club in trouble. 

Sometimes football has the capacity to leave you shocked and dumbfounded. You then find yourself looking for explanations, possible reasons and still you're none the wiser. The horrific plight that faces Derby County sends a shiver down the spine. It hardly seems possible because once Derby won the old First Division championship twice within three years- or as it's now known- the Premier League. So this is how it goes. Derby are in big trouble, huge financial trouble and the likelihood is that if they don't sort out their mounting debts, then this could be the end of the road for them. Great clubs are never exempt from the dreaded day and shortly but hopefully not, this will not be that day. 

The fact is that Derby County are on the verge of bankruptcy and could shortly be issued up winding- up orders and never allowed to play again. This is not without precedent since football has also been there. A couple of years Bury went out of business because Covid 19 had played havoc with their existence as a football club. Simply put, the club were haemorrhaging losses rather like a seriously sick hospital patient without a life-support machine. This is not the most pleasing analogy you could make but for Derby it must feel this way. 

Fifty years ago of course it was all so different. Brian Clough and Peter Taylor rocked up at the old Baseball Ground with a mission to transform Derby County into one of the biggest football clubs in Britain. By then of course Clough had become so convinced that Derby would win trophies sooner or later that few questioned his air of misplaced confidence, some would have said arrogance, that bumptious presumption that Derby would conquer all, winning trophies regularly and conquering Europe. It almost happened but then the fleeeting moments passed and now Derby, without entirely falling from grace, could lose their League status.

It all seems a far cry from those days when Clough and Taylor had proudly sat at the top of a coach, showing off the old First Divsion championship. The trophy was paraded around the streets of Derby and the crowds were adoring, besides themselves with elation and barely believing what had just happened to their club. It would only be another three years before Derby hit the jackpot with another pot of gold. The League Championship was brought back to the Baseball Ground and Derby began to rub their eyes. 

Your mind went back to those 1970s days when Derby were highly regarded, respected and revered by football's cognoscenti. They were the bees knees, the flavour of every month, a side of stature, status and a club who were going places. Clough insisted in playing the game properly, a fastidious task master, a perfectionist, critical of his players, the chairmen, the directors and, quite possbily the tea lady if she hadn't made Clough a cup immediately. 

Clough once said at Brighton that after a lengthy discussion with the chairman Mike Bamber, that they would get together and at the end of the lengthy chat, decide that, as usual, he was the only one who was always right and everybody should be accountable to him. Once Brighton were heavily beaten by Bristol Rovers 8-2 and even then the opinion was much the same. 

We all remember of course Clough's legendary days at Nottingham Forest when two successive First Division championships and two consecutive European Cups were won. By contrast there were the grim and catastrophic days at Leeds United when Clough was given only 44 days to revive Leeds and then found he didn't meet with Leeds approval. So Clough warned Leeds if they hadn't bucked up their ideas and listened to them carefully, he would walk out of the door quite swiftly and abruptly. He did and the rest is history. 

So Clough and Taylor just got up and stormed out of Elland Road because when he told Billy Bremner, Peter Lorimer and Johnny Giles that they could chuck their medals into the bin, some thought this was a kidology, a quite hilarious joke. But Clough meant it. Yes quite forcefully. So much so that they made a film about it called the Damned United. 

Now though the club are managed by one Wayne Rooney. The former England forward with a much publicised private life, stepped up out of nowhere and took over a Derby side not only struggling for respectability but slowly bleeding. They are now in the Championship( the old Second Division in the old currency). Covid 19 punched a damaging hole in the club's profit margins and the fans could only sit at home and wait patiently. Derby are now clinging onto the edge of a metaphorical cliff and the club are on the verge of disappearing altogether. 

Football's financial infrastructure is so complicated these days that you'd need to be a mathematician or distinguished economist to figure out the minutiae of a club's accounts books. Derby would be well advised not to look at either Manchester City or Newcastle since a horrific inferiority complex may just invade their space. The appointment of Arab trillionaires at both the Etihad and St James Park is all very well but what do you do when somebody tells you that you haven't paid your electricity bills for ages? You may be entitled to think that the world is conspiring against you. 

Derby, of course are still alive or just about. They're floating on the surface and buoyant but sooner or later the bills will have to be paid, players paid for that month and the wolf kept from the door. Derby, from an entirely impartial view, deserve rather better. They are one of football's nice guys, capable of so much more and a side with potential written straight through it. But underneath the turbulent surface, things are spiralling completely out of control. 

This is the club who once witnessed the good, old fashioned days, days when football grounds resembled allotment sites, mudheaps and cabbage patches that were never remotely suited to football. On one Saturday afternoon Derby were playing Manchester City at the old Baseball Ground. The season was well into its spring equinox and the pitch was now almost completely devoid of grass. Derby were given a penalty and the world stopped on its axis. Here's the question. What do you do when the penalty spot is no longer visible and something has to be done. You look to the groundsman who just happens to have a pot of white-wash at his disposal. Penalty spot restored. Problem solved. 

Derby's roll call of the great and good are stitched into the club's Rams crest. Dave Mckay had enjoyed a wonderful career at Spurs before joining Derby County. Mckay was a giant of a defender, an impenetrable obstacle in the face of hungry opponents. He was a rock, ruthless, remorseless, as hard as they come, blocking everybody and physically overwhelming, a bruiser of a centre half who stood for no-nonsense. There was Kevin Hector, Roy Mcfarland in the early 1970s, Bruce Rioch and Archie Gemmell in later years. Derby once went head to head with Real Madrid and almost triumphed. It seems an age ago.

So there you are Ladies and Gentlemen. Derby County are fighting for their lives and football can barely believe it. Pride Park is their new home and the pastures should be greener than ever. Sadly though Derby are teetering on the brink. It must be hoped that by the time the FA Cup Fourth Round has been and gone this weekend, the Rams are battering something rather more meaningful. Talk of the FA Cup may take some of their older supporters back to 1947 when the Rams brought home the FA Cup. We wish them well.