‘Fair play’: Finance expert explains what David Clowes did to avoid further Derby County points deduction

Kieran Maguire, an expert in football finance, explains what Derby County’s David Clowes did to avoid losing points.

When he paid £33 million, including £19.7 million to creditors, to purchase Derby County in July 2022, David Clowes emerged as the club’s savior.

The Rams will always be indebted to Clowes for saving their team from certain extinction after their 2022 Championship relegation.

Paul Warne led Derby to their second-tier comeback, which they completed against Carlisle United on the last day of the season.

After losing six first-team players, the squad is now well-positioned to add quality players this summer and outfit themselves to compete in the division.

It’s now clear that Clowes prevented the team from losing more points, which would have made the entire situation impossible.

David Clowes prevented Derby County from losing points, as Kieran Maguire explains.

Derby received a nine-point deduction for violating the profit and sustainability regulations during the 2021–2022 season, and an additional twelve points after the club entered administration.

This crushing defeat solidified their promotion to the Championship under Wayne Rooney, who without the deductions would have led the Rams to a 17th-place result.

Derby made a comeback in League One by gaining promotion in their second season, but football financial specialist Kieran Maguire has discovered that had Clowes not intervened, they would have lost an additional 15 points.

The 55-year-old wrote off all obligations and avoided a deduction by paying the football creditors in full. Maguire claims that if the team hadn’t paid its creditors in full, they would have faced a 15-point punishment known as a “exit penalty.”

“In the case of Krystian Bielik, I went through the administrators report on sort of a line-by-line basis and it said there were some unsecured football creditors of £8.8 million pounds, a significant chunk of which was irrespective of the Bielik deal,” said Maguire in an interview with the Price of Football podcast.

However, the club’s buyer had committed to paying off those debts efficiently—perhaps not on a personal but rather a corporate level.

It appears that David Clowes’ organization will have made those payments, even though, in theory, the administrators were required to go and do it. Derby would not have been subject to an exit penalty—I believe it was an additional 15 points—for leaving administration as a result.

“The regulations state that you must pay the football creditors in full and that the other creditors must receive at least 25% of what you owe.”

The Derby County Krystian Bielik signing was a disaster.

In August 2019, Derby paid a club-record £10 million to acquire Krystian Bielik from Arsenal on a long-term contract.

The Rams saw the 11-cap Poland international play in 49 games over the course of three seasons before selling him to Birmingham City for an initial cost that, according to Birmingham Mail, was far less than the sum they had to pay.

Deals like the one that brought Bielik to Pride Park ultimately drove Derby into financial ruin, leaving Clowes to pick up the pieces.

Years after reaching a settlement with the Gunners, they were still in pain; luckily, the Derbyshire businessman stepped in at the right moment.

Because of the possible financial consequences, the club has probably been scarred from overpaying for a player as a result of this contract.

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