Derby County's Owner Stays Committed Despite Failed Takeover

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

Rams chief executive Stephen Pearce has revealed that owner David Clowes came to within touching distance of selling the club to Saudi government official Turki Al-Sheikh in August – only for the deal to collapse at the last moment.

Clowes, the Derbyshire property developer and lifelong Derby supporter who rescued the club from administration in the summer of 2022, had agreed a sale with Al-Sheikh. The proposed takeover had cleared the Independent Football Regulator and the English Football League. All that was left was completion.

Then it vanished.

Al-Sheikh abruptly pulled out, leaving Derby stunned and stuck in limbo for much of the summer 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."

For weeks, Derby operated in what Pearce called a "holding pattern" while the bid was scrutinised. Transfer plans slowed. Decisions were parked. Everyone waited for the new era that never arrived.

When it blew up, it did so "completely out of the blue".

The response inside the club had to be immediate.

"But we regrouped and everybody got back on the horse," Pearce said. "It was like, right how do we go again? And let's crack on with what we wanted to do."

Crucially, Clowes had never stopped backing the squad, even while he believed he was about to walk away.

He had already signed off a substantial budget. The £6m fee to prise Bobby Clark from RB Salzburg, the £2.7m loan-to-buy deal for Sam Szmodics from Ipswich, and around £600,000 to bring in Alex Mowatt from West Bromwich Albion were all funded by Clowes at a time when he expected not to see that money again.

"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 could have shut the tap off. He did not.

"He could have quite easily, on 1 July, said to us and said to John [head coach John Eustace], '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 in into transfers now I'm not going to get back'.

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

Clowes has been open since taking control that he wanted fresh investment to help drive Derby back to the Premier League. The agreement with Al-Sheikh – a powerful figure in Saudi government circles and a heavyweight player in world boxing – looked like the moment that ambition would be supercharged for a club that finished just outside the play-off places last season.

Instead, when the takeover collapsed, Clowes pulled Derby off the market altogether. No more for-sale signs. No more waiting.

The focus turned fully to the squad.

The club spent £4m to bring in David Ozoh from Crystal Palace, the biggest single outlay after the aborted deal, and stacked the rest of the window with free transfers and loans. There was even a deadline-day reunion with Eiran Cashin to round off a frantic summer that had started with uncertainty and ended with a show of intent.

So has that turbulence knocked Derby off course in their promotion push?