As Bad as Things Got, Part One: Derby County - 5th May 1984
Another remastered series for paid Unexpected Delirium subscribers, in which Derby County's fall from grace in the late 1970s falls under the spotlight.
Things may have been worse for Derby County since this piece was first written in 2017, but the story of how the club went from being the champions of England twice in four years to the Third Division within a decade is still worth retelling.
Only two clubs lifted the Football League Championship more than once throughout the 1970s. Liverpool won it four times, including three times in four years at the end of the decade, and would go on to dominate English football until into the 1990s. For the other club to do so, the experience would be very different. Brian Clough, with characteristic hubris, had claimed that Derby County could be “bigger than Liverpool” after his side shocked the First Division through lifting the title in 1972 by the thinnest possible margin.
Clough and his assistant Peter Taylor lasted 16 more months in the job after their first league title before resigning in October of the following year. They had hoped to oust Sam Longson as chairman as they did with the Hartlepools United chairman Ernest Ord seven years before in their first job together, but failed. Both Clough and Taylor resigned on the evening of 15th October 1973. The resignation was accepted by Longson the following morning to widespread uproar from Rams fans, who demanded the board’s resignation along with Clough and Taylor’s reinstatement at the next home game against Leicester City four days later.
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