Derby County have five points from their opening eight Championship games and remain in the relegation zone, a start nobody at Pride Park anticipated when the season began. A last-gasp goal from Mo Fuseini at Burnley rescued a point and stopped the Rams going into the international break bottom of the table, but the damage of the opening weeks is already clear. The campaign was supposed to be the one in which Derby pushed for promotion. Instead, the club has been left picking up the pieces after Turki Alalshikh pulled out of his planned takeover an hour before the deal was due to be completed in August.
When John Eustace took charge in February 2025, Derby were fourth-from-bottom in the Championship, and his decision to leave a promotion challenge with Blackburn — then fifth — for a relegation scrap raised eyebrows. Internal difficulties and restrictions at Ewood Park played a part in that move, but Eustace had been sold a long-term plan: survival first, then consolidation, then a challenge for a return to the top flight. That plan was seriously disrupted when the takeover collapsed, blindsiding the club and affecting transfer work across the summer, even as owner David Clowes remained committed to bankrolling the Rams.
The club’s account of the fallout is not a single, unified one. Chief executive Stephen Pearce has denied that the summer disruption damaged recruitment, telling BBC Radio Derby: “From a transfer perspective we hadn’t lost anything we wanted to do.” Eustace’s own assessment is markedly different. “Obviously, we had our targets that we were looking at and who we wanted to bring in,” he told the Derby Telegraph this month. “When the takeover eventually didn’t happen, we’ve lost a lot of momentum on players that we were looking at.”
The list of deals that did not happen illustrates the point. Eustace wanted Liam Millar, but Birmingham City signed the Hull City forward on loan for the season. Derby then moved for Fuseini on deadline day from Union Saint-Gilloise — a player who had been due to join Blues before they signed Millar. Ben Brereton Diaz, who scored eight goals in 41 games on loan at Derby last season, was also wanted back, but the club could not move quickly enough and the Southampton forward committed to Sheffield United. Birmingham winger Patrick Roberts was another target, with his wages proving a stumbling block. None of last season’s loanees had options to buy, meaning Derby had to renegotiate to bring any of them back — and they were left open to market forces. Bobby Clark eventually cost £6m from Red Bull Salzburg, while David Ozoh returned for £4m on deadline day from Crystal Palace, who had valued him at £10m at the start of August. Sammie Szmodics has already hit the requirements to make his £2.7m move from Ipswich permanent. Clark, Ozoh and Szmodics were influential last term, but their returns only restore the squad to the level of last season rather than significantly improving it. Pisa striker Henrik Meister, who has scored just twice in a year, arrived on loan as back-up to Carlton Morris and Patrick Agyemang — only for the 22-year-old Dane to be asked to lead the line because both are injured.
Injuries have deepened the problems. Meister suffered a head injury against Birmingham this month, while Agyemang has been out since April after a serious Achilles problem sustained against Stoke. Reigning player of the season Matt Clarke is unlikely to return before December, goalkeeper Jacob Widell Zetterstrom is out for six weeks, Brighton loanee Eiran Cashin is sidelined, and Derry Murkin — expected to be the first-choice left-back — is out until after Christmas. As a result, Eustace has been unable to field the same back four in successive games since August. Derby resisted interest in players including Agyemang and Zetterstrom over the summer, underlining the intention not to be in this position again, but the current picture is a frustrating mirror image of last season.
With eighth place now enough for a play-off spot, that was viewed as an achievable target this year. Instead, Derby’s start is following a similar path to last term, when they took eight points from their opening 10 games. Yet their form across the final 36 games of that campaign, averaged over a whole season, would have been enough to finish fifth rather than eighth, four points adrift of the top six. That is evidence both Derby and Eustace can turn things around, but it only adds to the frustration of another slow start. His job is not under threat, and it is recognised that the former Rams midfielder is the best man to steer the club away from trouble, with a track record to support it: he was sacked by Birmingham when they were sixth in 2023, with Blues subsequently relegated after appointing Wayne Rooney, and he saved Blackburn from the drop in 2023-24 before leaving them in the play-off places. Derby host Wrexham on Saturday, and after the perfect storm that has enveloped Pride Park, Eustace needs the pieces to fall into place once more.