East Midlands clubs occupy Championship’s bottom two spots, though Derby’s problems are more severe on and off the pitch
It was a scene Derby County supporters had been dreading, one that made everything depressingly real. The setting – the club’s Moor Farm training base – and backdrop – an advertising board filled with a myriad of sponsors – were familiar, only in the foreground it was not Wayne Rooney talking team news but administrators telling how they plan to dig Derby out of the mud. Less than 24 hours after the club had plunged to the bottom of the Championship, Andrew Hosking and Carl Jackson, insolvency specialists in suits and ties, shuffled into position and delivered a cautiously optimistic opening gambit.
Derby are clinging to such hope amid the disconcerting headline numbers, minus points and debts north of £60m. They owe HM Revenue and Customs at least £26m,
Arsenal transfer fees from the £10m deal that made Krystian Bielik the club’s record signing, the former manager Phillip Cocu compensation and they are losing about £1.5m a month. Last week Quantuma, the administrators first engaged a month ago, analysed the “operational efficiencies” to determine the scale of redundancies required and on Monday Steve McClaren voluntarily stepped down from his role as technical director “to help preserve other jobs across the
Football club”.