Wayne Rooney keeping Derby County afloat would be ‘the greatest achievement in football’ amid lawsuits and debt

Wayne Rooney were in the final stages of securing the qualifications needed to manage at the elite level of English football, but turned out to be learning on the job as Derby county the manager provided a much more comprehensive education than anything he had learned while studying for his UEFA Pro License.

“I’m reviewing my Professional License [qualification needed to manage in the Premier League] At the moment and it certainly doesn’t prepare you for this,” Rooney told ESPN. But listen, that’s what it is and I have to deal with it. “

“This” is shorthand for the category of problems Rooney, 36, faces every day at Derby, his EFL champions. The club convinced him to cut his spell short at DC United in Major League Soccer two years ago to take his first steps up the coaching ladder, initially as player-coach under Phillip Cocu before moving into team management in November 2020.

Since taking charge, Rooney has led Derby to just 14 wins in 59 games, and the club narrowly missed relegation to third division League One on the final day of last season. In December 2021, they were anchored at the foot of the Championship, 20 points behind in safety, after being deducted 21 points by the EFL: 12 points when entering adminor procedures to minimize financial insolvency, and nine more points in November for a historic breach of financial rules under former owner Mel Morris.

Derby, British league champions in 1972 and 1975, are owed £83m, including unpaid tax invoice £26m, plus outstanding transfers to various clubs amounting to £8.3m. When it was announced that St John Ambulance, the charity providing medical assistance to the games, owed Club £8,300 in September, Derby supporters raised £12,000 in 72 hours pay the bill.

The club is also being sued by two rival clubs for potential loss of income. Middlesbrough is asking for 45 million pounds after being denied a play-off spot and Derby’s chance to win promotion to the Premier League for the 2018-19 season. As part of the lawsuit, Boro says Derby’s overspending broke financial rules and gave them an unfair advantage. Meanwhile, Wycombe Wanderers is claim £6 million in lost earnings after being relegated from the Championship last season. Wycombe reckons Derby suffered a nine-point deduction last season and not this, they will stay and Derby are relegated instead.

Add to that the problem of severe transfer restrictions, which only allow Derby to sign a loan or six-month deal, and it’s easy to see why Rooney has found it harder to find his first managerial job than he has. can imagine.

“It’s not ideal,” he said. “When you go into management you want everything to be perfect and in the right place. But we know in football, not only at Derby but at other clubs, there are things that are not in your control. You have to solve them. decide and deal with them.

“I’ve had to react to a lot of things and it feels right to the way I’m doing the job. Things on the pitch we need to get right, but the players are giving it all. I’ve always felt that If you do something in an honest way, you can learn from it and you can grow from it, but I also have to make the right decisions at the right time. We’ll get through this.”

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Derby’s problems predated Rooney’s time at the club and can be traced back to the takeover of former owner Morris in September 2015.

Morris, a Derby-born businessman who has amassed a fortune of more than £500 million through a dating website and is the company behind the mobile game Candy Crush Saga, immediately announced his ambitions. bring the club to the Premier League. He appears to have backed his talk, breaking Derby’s transfer record four times in his first three years as owner, with the biggest spend of £10m on Arsenal young player Krystian Bielik in 2019.

The plan is simple: spend big, go to the Premier League and pay the bills as the money comes in from the richest league in the world. But fail first Aston Villa in the 2019 Championship play-off final that left Derby in a difficult financial position and Rooney was left to pick up the pieces.

The situation at Pride Park became so bleak that Rooney was even forced to spend his money on training equipment, including a drone that would allow the club’s video analysts to shoot and study. training sessions. Rooney told The Sunday Times in October, he even slept on the sofa in his office during the summer transfer window in an attempt to land deals over the line.

The problems on the pitch were almost insignificant given the size of the mountain Derby had to climb to avoid relegation, and every press conference was dominated by questions about the club’s existence, the threat liquidation and potential new owners. But Rooney insists he doesn’t allow problems off the pitch to distract him from the job he is paid to do: manage a football team.

“Does it distract me? Not much, because I know I can’t control it,” Rooney said. “Obviously I get updates, talk to admins and people I need to talk to, but my focus is on the players as individuals, as people and as a team. and my staff Ninety-five percent of what I’m doing is focused on making the team better.

“If you do not believe [we can stay up], then we can all go home too. Football is a crazy game sometimes, and crazy things happen. If we can make our fans smile for 90 minutes or give them hope we can achieve something, we will do all we can to make it happen. “

A glimmer of hope ahead for Derby is the prospect of the club being acquired by American businessman Chris Kirchner, co-founder and CEO of Dallas-based software company Slync.io. Kirchner is in talks with Derby administrators – although other parties have also expressed interest – and he attended the home defeat to QPR in November, but no takeover decision has been made yet. .

“I haven’t spoken to the other parties and I don’t know who they are,” Rooney said. “You hear me mention Chris by name because he’s very serious and I know his plan. If he’s there and we can get it done, let’s do it. He’s the man I know he’s in. there. I talked to him [at the QPR game] and it shows how much he wants it. It’s good to get his feedback on what he thinks.

“From all the discussions I’ve had, this club should be fine. A new owner is coming. I’m trying to make it happen faster than it is now, but it’s going to happen. One when it happens, it will be an opportunity to reboot and rebuild and we can start looking ahead.”

But in the immediate future, finding a way out of the hole they are ranked at the bottom of the table is Derby’s biggest challenge. They host Blackpool at home on Saturday and Rooney believes a stay, which seems unlikely, is still possible.

“The table doesn’t lie,” he said. “However, we look at it, it’s not going to be good for the next two or three weeks. But I believe, by March-March we can look at the table and say we’ve got a chance or we’ve got it. will be relegated, will have a better understanding of our position.

“It’s going to be the biggest achievement in football for me, dealing with everything and managing to stay, but there’s a lot of hard work to do before we start doing that.”