Rotherham United took an eighth minute lead against Cardiff City as viewers world-wide were just about warming up to a lunchtime kickoff on final day for all Championship clubs. Final day of a Championship season is an unique spectacle in itself but more so, for teams that have seemingly everything on the line. The dreaded ‘R’ word is more than a change of divisions. Teams lose money, players don’t get contracts renewed, employees lose jobs. It has broader implications than just taking the football a division lower. So when Lewis Wing put Rotherham ahead on the pitch and above the drop-zone on the table, a sense of calm ensued on the touchline. But 40-odd miles down the M1, England and Manchester United’s all time leading goalscorer was pacing up and down the technical area in his overcoat. He had seen it all. He had squared up to Patrick Viera as a teenager. He had scored a Champions League hattrick on debut. Wazza the player was a genius by birth. Wazza the manager was learning his craft and taking in the nuances and brittle of being a football league manager. He had lost his last six games in a row. His forwards weren’t firing and his defence was leaking amateur goals. All these thoughts were racing through his head when Sam Hutchinson waded into the penalty area from a throw-in. A fairly simple set piece routine, the likes of which should be dealt with quite easily you’d think. But there’s no logic and reasoning in a relegation dogfight. No extra marks for artsy displays. You win games of football and put points on the table. And amateur defending errors had been the hallmark of those six league defeats on the trot, Swansea and former Derby County prodigy Morgan Whittaker being the most recent gainers, the week before. What happened next, most of us know. It’s beyond the imaginative powers of the human mind. It’s beyond what you and I could come up with if we were asked to write a script for it.
There were five goals in the second half. Two for Wednesday, three for Derby. Rotherham conceded a late equalizer and dropped into the bottom three and Derby just about hanged on. Curtis Davis, who was recovering from a torn achilles was declared unfit to play but was named in the matchday squad as an emergency backup. He was called upon to shut up shop and he threw himself into every header, every airborne ball. It was magical, it was beautiful and it was bloody exhausting for the players, the staff and of course, Wazza himself. He had seemingly seen it all but nothing quite like this. ‘It can’t happen again’, he said after the game. He and his coaching staff had pulled an absolute rabbit out of the hat and they knew they’d need reinforcements. That the miracle of 8th March was unlikely to be repeated again when Derby spent around 80 of the 90 scheduled minutes in the drop zone.
Fast forward two months. Derby County players were scheduled to return to training on the 1st of July for fitness work and pre-season briefings. During the time off, Wazza would’ve hoped for reinforcements and moreover, a resolve of the club’s ownership situation. Instead, he comes back to a second failed takeover attempt in less than a calendar year, a transfer embargo, a fine from the EFL, potential relegation into League One and just fourteen senior contracts in effect, one of which is record signing Krystian Beilik’s who’s scheduled to be out of action till late November. His absence has been felt. He was the mainstay in Wayne Rooney’s midfield, often slotting into central defence and playing a key role in the surge up the table in between December and February where Derby collected 30 of their 44 points. The main piece of the jigsaw which led to the media hailing Wayne Rooney as ‘tactically fluid’ with ‘in-game tweaks’. One senior goalkeeper, one senior striker and no senior centre halves with the understanding that Curtis Davies will be tied down to a new contract. Jack Marriott, the club’s big money transfer from Peterborough, has headed back and the general sentiment is that the fee hasn’t been justified. Andre Wisdom, a very versatile player across the backline and Martyn Waghorn, the club’s final day hero from last season are out of contracts as well (Waghorn has since moved to Coventry on a two-year deal). If there’s one thing and one thing only that Championship football simply cannot do without, it’s depth. Fourteen barely makes up a matchday squad, nevermind a season squad. Jack Stretton, a highly regarded academy forward who you’re likely to hear about a lot as the years roll on and few others from the academy are likely to be called up if situations don’t change but that’s far from ideal. One needs bodies and moreover, seasoned experience to get through 46 games in a championship season where the grind is real as fixtures pile up around Boxing Day and late February. And from gaffer to fan, everyone knows that. Rock bottom that, init? How did it come to this?
The morning after the news broke about the EFL fine and proposed relegation, some staff woke up to major concerns over their job security. The fear of a retroactive relegation and thus staff members being laid off was realised once more, just when things had gone quiet around the club.
There were fears over administration and, if that was the outcome, if the EFL would be willing to pay the wages of the staff who are not earning big money. It is believed that the EFL gave Derby little to no notice as to when the statement was going out and by the time those who were awake had digested what had been drawn up, it was already published and doing the rounds. The Rams were cleared of breaching Financial Fair Play rules last year.
However, the EFL appealed against the decision to an independent tribunal and it has won the element of the case concerning how the club measured the value of players – called amortisation.
Derby said the club “accepts but is disappointed” at the decision.
An EFL statement said: “The [independent league arbitration] panel concluded that the disciplinary commission was wrong to dismiss the league’s expert accountancy evidence, which demonstrated that the club’s policy regarding the amortisation of player registrations was contrary to standard accounting rules.”
This, coupled with the collapse of the Erik Alonso takeover, who was very upbeat about the prospective deal has put the club in a completely unprecedented situation whereby they have no information about funding, player contracts, incomings – heck, even the division they’re likely to play in.
I don’t know if it’s the fact that Derby County have always been a mouth-watering Football Manager save, the Wazza connections or the history of a club that has housed the eloquence of Dave McKay and the brains of Brian Clough but I feel very strongly about the fans because underneath the chaos, it’s another episode of mismanagement and negligence on the part of the owners. Sunderland, a division below, is a prime example of a football institution being led astray due to poor management from the hierarchy.
How long English football allows this to happen, is the real question.
Into Added Time 