Derby County Owner Reaffirms Commitment After Failed Sale

An hour from goodbye, Derby County’s owner chose to double down instead.

Derby chief executive Stephen Pearce has revealed that David Clowes was on the brink of selling the club to Saudi government official Turki Al-Sheikh in August, only for the deal to collapse at the last moment – and for the local businessman to respond by pouring in more money and reaffirming his Premier League ambition.

A sale cleared, then scrapped

Clowes, the Derbyshire property developer and lifelong Rams supporter who rescued Derby from administration in the summer of 2022, had taken the club right to the edge of a new era.

An agreement with Al-Sheikh had been reached. The proposed takeover passed the checks of both the Independent Football Regulator and the English Football League. The paperwork was lining up. Inside Pride Park, they were preparing for a handover.

Then it vanished.

Al-Sheikh suddenly withdrew. No gradual cooling, no drawn-out renegotiation. Just a late, sharp turn away from a deal that had shaped Derby’s entire summer.

Pearce described the impact on BBC Radio Derby. The club, he said, had been left in a “holding pattern” for weeks as the bid went through scrutiny, much of it during the crucial summer transfer window. The eventual collapse was, in his words, “completely out of the blue”.

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

Regrouping at the edge of a takeover

Shock lasted only so long. Once the deal died, the mood inside the club flipped from waiting to acting.

“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.”

The crucial detail: Clowes had never stopped backing the squad while he believed he was about to sell it.

He had already signed off on a budget and committed to key signings during the takeover process. The £6m fee to bring Bobby Clark in permanently from RB Salzburg. The loan-to-buy move for Sam Szmodics from Ipswich at £2.7m. Around £600,000 to prise Alex Mowatt from West Bromwich Albion.

All of it, Pearce stressed, funded by Clowes at a time when he fully expected not to own Derby County for much longer.

“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.

“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 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.”

Off the market, on the front foot

Clowes had never hidden his wish to bring in fresh investment to fuel a push back to the Premier League. For a club that finished just outside the play-off places last season, the agreement with Al-Sheikh – a powerful figure in Saudi government circles and in world boxing – looked like a major financial springboard.

When that springboard disappeared, Clowes did not go hunting for another buyer. He pulled Derby County off the market and turned his attention inward, back to strengthening the club he had almost handed over.

The response came quickly. The £4m capture of David Ozoh from Crystal Palace became the standout deal after the aborted takeover, backed up by a series of free transfers and loans. Deadline day even brought a reunion with Eiran Cashin, underlining that Derby were not about to tread water.

The question was obvious: had the disrupted summer knocked the club off its promotion track?

Pearce’s answer 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.”

Derby came within an hour of a new owner and a very different future. Instead, they enter this campaign with a local backer still signing cheques he never expected to see again – and a promotion bid that now carries his name as much as the club’s.