Derby County's Bold Move Amid Failed Takeover

Derby County were an hour away from changing hands. Instead, they doubled down on chasing the Premier League.

Owner David Clowes, the Derbyshire property developer who rescued the club from administration in 2022, had everything lined up to sell to Saudi government official Turki Al-Sheikh in August. The agreement was in place. The Independent Football Regulator had signed it off. So had the EFL. All that was left was completion.

Then the plug was pulled.

Al-Sheikh suddenly withdrew, leaving Derby’s hierarchy stunned and the club stuck in what chief executive Stephen Pearce calls a “holding pattern” for a large chunk of the summer transfer window.

“The wind was taken out of our sails, totally,” Pearce told BBC Radio Derby. “We weren’t expecting it to fall down, effectively, an hour before we thought it was going to complete.”

The collapse came “completely out of the blue”. Recruitment plans had been parked while the bid was scrutinised. Time drained away. The club waited.

And yet, while Derby paused in public, Clowes kept spending in the background.

Spending while selling

Crucially, the owner had already signed off a budget and committed to deals even as he prepared to hand over the keys. The numbers are stark.

• Around £6m to bring Bobby Clark in permanently from RB Salzburg.
• A loan-to-buy agreement worth £2.7m for Sam Szmodics from Ipswich.
• Roughly £600,000 to land Alex Mowatt from West Bromwich Albion.

All of it funded by Clowes at a moment when he believed he was on the verge of selling.

“This is why he’s such an incredible owner,” Pearce said. “He thought the takeover was going to happen, he knew he was never going to get a penny back for all of that money he spent on those players and he still did it.”

Clowes had an easy out. He could have frozen everything on 1 July, told Pearce and head coach John Eustace to sit tight and wait for the new regime.

“He could have quite easily, on 1 July, said to us and said to John, ‘look, I think this is going through, the signs are the club is going to be sold, you’re just going to have to wait because every penny I put into transfers now I’m not going to get back’,” Pearce explained.

“And he didn’t. He backed it regardless and that’s why we’re in such a strong position.”

From takeover target to statement of intent

Clowes has never hidden his desire to bring in fresh investment to fuel a promotion push. For a club that finished just outside the play-offs last season, the agreement with Al-Sheikh – a powerful figure in Saudi government and a major player in boxing – looked like a seismic step towards the Premier League.

When that vanished, Clowes changed course. Derby County came off the market. The focus snapped back to strengthening what he already owned.

The response was not to retreat but to spend again.

Around £4m went on David Ozoh from Crystal Palace, the biggest single fee after the deal fell apart. Around him came a raft of free transfers and loans, including a deadline-day reunion with Eiran Cashin.

The message was clear: promotion plans would not be parked just because the takeover was.

Asked if the disrupted summer had stalled Derby’s Premier League ambitions, Pearce was blunt: “Not in the slightest, otherwise we wouldn’t have spent all the money we’ve spent.

“We want to push on. We want progression this season.”

The sale that never happened has left Derby with something else instead: an owner still paying, a squad strengthened on his watch, and a promotion bid that now rests squarely on his shoulders.