In 2007/08, Derby County finished the season with 11 points, winning just one game.
It was the lowest ever points tally in a Premier League season.
The campaign tainted the careers of almost everybody who took part.
It even included a sex tape scandal at one point.
But it began with an unlikely success and a rise conducted by one of the most divisive
and polarising figures British football has known: the combustible manager Billy Davies.
Davies arrived at Derby in 2006, tasked with taking the Championship club up into the Premier
League within three years. The summer before he arrived, County had flirted with relegation to
League One, finishing 20th. Nevertheless, Davies would need just one season to win a startling
promotion. It was way ahead of schedule; a happy accident that saw an ill prepared,
helpless side stumble into English football’s top-flight and – ultimately – into notoriety.
Their failure wasn’t a surprise. One British bookmaker offered to pay out
on Derby’s relegation as early as September. The same company also offered odds of 33-1
that they’d go through the entire year without winning a game. That didn’t happen, but it very
nearly did and the warning signs of what was to come had been sounding quietly for some months.
In February of 2007, Derby had actually been in first place and headed for automatic promotion.
A late season stumble, however, partly caused by an internal row over promotion bonuses,
saw the club sink back towards the pack and settle for a place in the playoffs.
They would, of course, emerge victorious. But after the game, on the pitch at Wembley – in
what was really a moment of great personal triumph – the manager gave a strangely detached interview.
He could be seen pumping his fists to the crowd, as he describes what promotion means to the fans.
And then he praises his players, before his interviewer asks him
about becoming a Premier League manager. His expression changed and his voice seemed to crack.
“Well… we’ll enjoy tonight” he said, before darting off-screen.
Years later, Davies provided the context behind that interview,
telling FourFourTwo Magazine in 2017 that he’d heard prior to the Playoff
final that the club would be undergoing a change of ownership, as a result of which
his position was under threat, regardless of whether promotion was achieved or not.
What’s incontestably true – and what would so brutally expose Derby at the level
above – was the hugely underwhelming transfer activity that followed their playoff win.
Joining them in the Premier League, were Sunderland,
who had finished top of the Championship, and Birmingham, who had been runners-up.
In preparation, the Black Cats would spend heavily on
Craig Gordon (Hearts, £10m), Kenwyne Jones (Southampton, £8.1m), Kieran
Richardson (Manchester United, £7.4m) and Michael Chopra (Cardiff, £6.75m).
Birmingham weren’t quite so ambitious, but still spent over £26m. Fabrice Muamba was signed from
Arsenal (£5.4m), Franck Quedrue from Fulham (£3.4m) and Garry O’Connor returned to the
UK from Lokomotiv Moscow (£3.6m). They also made clever use of the loan market, giving
Wilson Palacios his break in English football and striking a shrewd deal for a young Mauro Zarate.
Sunderland would still struggle to 15th place and Birmingham would be relegated in 19th, but
both gave themselves a fighting chance. Derby, by unflattering contrast, showed neither any ambition
nor acumen in the market and that reflected in their finishing last by a staggering 24 points
“We had an ageing, mid-table Championship team,” Davies told FourFourTwo’s Chris Flanagan
in November 2017. “I gave the board options
for new signings and the board decided they would pick the cheaper options.”
And that’s certainly how it looks. Robert Earnshaw and Claude Davis were brought in,
from Norwich and Sheffield United respectively. Journeyman goalscorer Kenny Miller moved back
south from Celtic, and American midfielder Benny Feilhaber joined from Hamburg in the Bundesliga.
It left Derby still very much dependent on their Football League spine and – as a result – badly
outmatched. Before the end of September, they would lose 4-0 at Spurs, 5-0 at Arsenal,
and 6-0 at Liverpool. In November, they would suffer the ignominy of losing 5-0 to West Ham
at Pride Park, which was part of a five-game run without a single point or even a goal.
It was bleak. For Billy Davies, it would get even worse.
His information had been correct: the club was about to be sold. General Sports & Entertainment
would eventually take control in January 2008, but by the previous October the boardroom had already
changed significantly. Former chairman Peter Gadsby had been replaced by Adam Pearson, who
would be integral to that eventual sale and who – Davies believed – was determined to replace him.
The relationship was doomed, reaching the point of no return within a month.
Following defeat to Chelsea at Pride Park and apparently believing his sacking to be imminent,
Davies went public with his discontent in the post-game press conference.
“The team is not good enough for the Premier League”, he said.
“That’s no reflection or disrespect to the players. They know that. They’re not good enough.”
“To compete in this league and at this level”, he continued,
“you need investment in players. We have to invest in the playing staff.
I haven’t spoken to the new chairman in three weeks because he’s a busy man who does things
differently to the ex-chairman. But it would be nice to meet up soon’.”
The reception was – and remains – mixed. To some, it was a legitimate grievance. To others,
a diversionary tactic, deployed to disguise Davies’ tactical limitations at the higher level.
Whatever the case, he wouldn’t have to wait long to hear from Pearson. Within 24 hours,
Derby announced Davies’ departure. Two days later, they unveiled Paul Jewell as his replacement.
Jewell was a survival specialist who had built his reputation with Bradford City,
then at Wigan Athletic. On paper, he was a smart appointment and – according to a conspiratorial
Davies – he was the manager that Adam Pearson had always intended to replace him with.
Jewell strongly denies that, but it didn’t take him long to realise that he’d made a mistake:
“I look back and realise I rushed into the job” he told the Yorkshire Post in 2019.
““That time damaged me. My stock was high, but Derby was a real struggle.”
True, Jewell inherited a group of players who had experienced the worst of Premier League life,
but also a squad with a natural inferiority. Reflecting in 2018, centre-half Dean Leacock
told the Daily Mail that he “got a real anxiety” just by looking at the fixture list
at the beginning of the season. Andy Todd, the veteran defender, remembered that he could “sense
the fear among the players” and that “we were just there to make up the numbers that season”.
Jewell tried. His trolly dash in the January transfer window produced a disparate group of
reinforcements. Nine players arrived, including Robbie Savage, Danny Mills,
Laurent Robert, and Roy Carroll, but without any cause for encouragement.
Derby were a hopeless case. The sum total of Jewell’s reign was a further five draws,
a humiliating FA Cup exit at home to Championship side Preston North End,
and three more games in which they’d concede six times, versus Chelsea,
Arsenal and – in what was probably the lowest of many low points- Aston Villa.
In late March of 2008, an old homemade sex tape that featured Jewell somehow found its way into the hands of a British tabloid.
Less than a week later, having suffered as many lows as is likely possible in a Premier League season, Derby’s relegation was confirmed.
And with it, their unfortunate legend.