Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. The best way to follow his journey is by subscribing here.
In May 2019, after a 5-2 win over Arsenal at Pride Park, Derby County’s Under-18 team were crowned national champions. Arsenal’s two goals that evening were scored by Bukayo Saka. Derby’s youngsters ran riot, having won the Premier League North title the previous week. The next season, Derby competed in the Uefa Youth League, beating Borussia Dortmund at home.
What is most astonishing about that U18 team is just how many progressed through to first-team level. The usual hit rate, even at Championship clubs, is one or two from every XI (Saka was the only one from Arsenal’s team to make it at the Emirates).
Lee Buchanan, Max Bird, Louie Sibley, Jason Knight, Eiran Cashin, Jordan Brown – all made league appearances for Derby.
Of those who didn’t, Morgan Whittaker and Archie Brown left before reaching first-team age. Whittaker is now at Middlesbrough, Brown at Gent in Belgium. The conversion was remarkable.
Later that same month, Derby went to Wembley to play Aston Villa in the Championship play-off final. The financial implications of that fixture are repeatedly hyped to the point of mania by the media, but that year all the hyperbole felt grotesquely appropriate. The winner would head for a Premier League bounty and escape; the loser would have their future thrown into doubt.
So it proved. Two years after the Wembley defeat, Derby entered a period of administration that would last nine months, ultimately causing the club’s relegation to the third tier and threatening bankruptcy and liquidation.
Administrators repeatedly warned of the most dire consequences before local businessman David Clowes eventually saved Derby.
That period of enforced austerity, with transfer budgets non-existent and first-team players sold or released in every window, was bleak for almost everybody at Derby. But it also created a window of opportunity for their class of 2019. It allowed members of a successful U18 team to make the leap into the first team in a manner that had become highly unusual.
That age group was not Derby’s only academy success story. In addition to those in the 2019 final, the 2020-2023 age-group cohorts also included Jayden Bogle (now at Leeds United), Festy Ebosele (Istanbul Basaksehir, via Udinese and Watford), Malcolm Ebiowei (Crystal Palace) and Liam Delap (Ipswich Town via Manchester City).
Derby County 0-1 Sunderland (Tuesday 21 January)
- Game no.: 58/92
- Miles: 38
- Cumulative miles: 9,670
- Total goals seen: 164
- The one thing I’ll remember in May: The latest in a series of goalkeepers gaining presumably phantom minor muscle injuries that require treatment and allow a team talk.
The percentage of academy graduates over that period still around Championship level or above is deeply impressive.
Buchanan left for Werder Bremen and is now top of League One with Birmingham City. Knight and Bird are at Bristol City, Sibley at Oxford United. Last month, Cashin was sold to Brighton for £9m. After years of losing control, Derby were finally able to command a sizable transfer fee of their own, rather than someone else feeling the benefit.
Derby’s academy, then, played a key role in keeping the club alive. Clowes has repeatedly recognised its symbolic and practical importance between 2019 and 2022. Without those academy graduates, more money would have been spent signing players and an even deeper hole been dug. Without the academy graduates being as good as they were, Derby would have been relegated sooner and the financial apocalypse would somehow have been worse. Game over.
Just as importantly, it provided a ray of hope for supporters during the worst months. Nobody would have wished for such unmitigated bleakness, but having pride in academy youngsters progressing to the first team is a source of intense pride. To those players, it allowed them to forge senior careers.
In July 2023, Derby were delighted to announce the retention of their academy’s category one status. After missing out on the play-offs in League One, Derby were the lowest-ranked club in the country with the highest academy ranking. They were commended on their productivity rates, education and welfare provisions and training facilities.
Derby’s sides continue to compete in Premier League competitions at U21, U18 and U16 level.
This season, the U18s are behind only the two Manchester clubs in Premier League North. Liam Thompson has progressed to the first team over the last few years and Darren Robinson made his debut this season.
Derby are now seeking outside investment again, with Clowes reportedly open to selling his 80 per cent stake having saved the club from economic catastrophe.
In November, accounts revealed a £14.2m loss in their promotion season from League One. With three months of the season remaining, Derby are back in a perilous position in the Championship and have appointed John Eustace in an attempt to stave off relegation.
In some supporters, the latest financial restraints may provoke scrutiny of funding a category one academy at a cost of roughly £6m a year.
They may prefer to operate under a player trading model, using that money to buy low, develop and sell for profit and hope to be a little less long-termist while the short-term league position looks insecure. These are views held by plenty and they are not afraid to express them. There is a clamour for investment to rebuild a team whether Derby stay up or go down.
Is the risk here not that you just repeat history on an endless cycle of chasing the glory rather than trying to build it? That Derby starting XI in the 2019 play-off final, managed by Frank Lampard, contained Fikayo Tomori, Ashley Cole, Mason Mount, Tom Huddlestone and Harry Wilson. Wayne Rooney would follow. The wage bill was unsustainable and so were the budgets.
When Derby moved away from the academy graduate plan, spending money in pursuit of the Premier League dream, it backfired on them and they paid the consequences. There is inherent risk in speculating to accumulate and if every club does it anyone that doesn’t get promoted will burn through money eventually. How could anyone who loves the club and lived through those wretched months want to take any risk?
Surely attempting any more shortcuts spectacularly misses the point anyway? As with Reading, another club lower than it would like but with a youth development structure to rival most in the top flight, the academy is Derby’s identity – their unusual (if not quite unique) selling point – and thus the thing worth protecting most.
If it maintains its prolificacy, it is the route to eventual sustainability. In the meantime, if budgets are tight, the club has proven that it can look internally for solutions, just as it did before.
When Clowes is pitching Derby to potential investors or buyers, he will talk of glorious history, of an established, loyal fanbase and of a stadium no longer owned by a third party. But, if he’s sensible, Clowes will focus on an academy that has continually proven itself capable of producing talent during years of tumult.
That academy saved a club once. It gave reason for hope. Now it deserves the chance to lead the club forward into a new era, the post-financial woe era of Derby. It will take time. It may take the club falling again before it rises. But at least it will be sustainable and at least it will be something tangible to be proud of.
Daniel Storey has set himself the goal of visiting all 92 grounds across the Premier League and EFL this season. You can follow his progress via our interactive map and find every article (so far) here
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