Derby fans everywhere will be happy that justice was done at Northampton Crown Court on July 20th with jail sentences handed out to Murdo Mackay, Andrew Mackenzie, Jeremy Keith and David Lowe for their parts in fraudulent activities at our football club.

However, Messrs. Mackay, Mackenzie, Keith, and Lowe aren’t the only ones to suffer a sentence, as those nefarious events during their governance of Derby County earlier this decade also condemned club and fans to penalties themselves - a sentence of sorts - which they have been serving together.

We witnessed a severe depletion that plunged the club into an alarming condition, whereby it was impossible to visualise Derby as a serious contender for promotion capable of sustained Premier League residence in the manner that it had achieved in the mid-1990s. At the height of opposition to the Sleightholme regime, it seemed more likely that the club could actually fold altogether.

Whilst it’s still remarkable that Derby came quite close to promotion during that turbulent time in reaching the Championship play-offs in season 2004-05 under George Burley’s canny management, the financial decline and disarray was apparent for those who looked beyond that brief on-field recovery.

We now know that the decline was exacerbated by the incompetence and greed of the incumbent regime. The club is certainly still recovering from this, despite a quick-fire promotion in 2007. Those two and a half years consigned us to a lower rung on the football ladder for several further years or at least a snakes-and-ladders existence, whilst the club later sought to secure a stronger financial future.

Much damage was inflicted by the banished regime although decline was in train through the earlier consequences of Derby’s relegation from the Premier League in 2002, shortly before the Co-op Bank took the club out of Lionel Pickering’s hands when the money ran out from our benefactor chairman.

Critical events stem back to the time when the club could have benefited from a managerial change when Jim Smith lost his touch and the financial decline began. That didn’t happen and the chairman - and then the bank - made all the wrong choices, managerially, financially, commercially - in the carpeted rooms where managers are recruited or new ownership deals are proposed and agreed.

Mr Pickering’s ‘dream team’ board that had the vision to build Pride Park Stadium and Moor Farm enjoyed the benefit of Jim Smith and Steve McClaren’s enterprising and cosmopolitan style of football management but the board began to break up in 2001 amid acrimony between some parties.

This in itself coloured Mr Pickering’s responses and emotions in looking to resolve the club’s crisis. It led to a refusal from him to entertain firm takeover bids for DCFC that may well have led to a prompt recovery of the club both on and off the field. Ostensibly, Keith and Co need never have been let near the club. Their involvement set the club’s recovery back several years.

Subsequent to Mr Pickering’s disaffection from former board colleagues, the chairman was offered alternative takeover solutions. Despite a desperate need to solve a situation that already saw the club in excess of £30m in debt, those good and bona fide alternative solutions were spurned.

It is all ifs, buts and maybe’s, though if other owners had taken over, an ABC loan would not have been visited upon the club; it’s quite possible that given a season or two, the club would have climbed back amongst the elite to set about achieving consolidation to sustain a new Premier League tenancy.

Affording John Sleightholme’s board an opportunity to take possession of Derby County compounded previous unwise or simply erroneous decisions. Fatefully, the club’s bankers accepted the apparent integrity and credibility of the proposals submitted by Mr Keith & Co. and were seduced by these self-styled ‘business doctors’ during that initial pursuit of the club. Con men prey on weak businesses.

Had the willing local consortia been given a look-in and taken possession of the club, there were several star players that could have been sold immediately for large transfer fees to Premier League clubs offset some of the debt and reverse the financial decline. They weren’t sold; the club stagnated, players’ wages weren’t paid and the chairman and bank came under pressure to resolve the financial crisis.
How we paid for the decisions that followed - and how certain parties facing the Judge at Northampton Crown Court may now regret their own part in placing the club into such dire straits for their own gain and which fomented opposition, revelations, challenges and overthrow of their failed and greedy regime.

No doubt the late Mr Pickering would be utterly horrified to know of the activities of Mr Keith et al and devastated at the dire consequences that their governance had for the club’s recovery. The convicted parties must all carry that burden of shame and betrayal alongside (and beyond) their jail sentences.

The club cost the regime a measly £3; the convicted were not happy with the trappings of football club ownership: the status of directorships, access to corporate entertainment, executive offices and cars - but became ‘fast-buck fraudsters’ regardless of their denials - and they lined their own pockets.

We never did get the promised ‘PowerPoint proposals’ from Mr Keith as to how Mr Sleigholme’s regime would resolve Derby’s financial paralysis. Rather, there was the continual smug and superior lecturing about how things were in hand and that recovery was both imminent and assured. Setting fan against fan to divide and rule the fanbase into virtual loyalists or outlaws was a tactic that cannot be forgiven.

Even as they surveyed their cut-price empire from their privileged berth in the director’s box on matchdays at Pride Park Stadium and had responsibility for solving a £35m club debt, serious amounts of supporters’ money were scuttling around the globe into distant bank accounts to furnish the nest eggs that they were secreting away.

Active fans became aware of the mysterious and remote source of that £15m loan by which the stadium was mortgaged, while Jeremy and Co held their cover and dismissed any awkward questions. Communication with the club was more difficult as relationships with the fans became strained.

Most fans ignore off-field and financial matters and hope that they will cure themselves or somehow a rescue will materialise, because the football is what interests them the most.

It was therefore ironic (and in a way, crucial) that poor management and a dangerous decline on the field drew yet more attention to how the club was being operated. George Burley found his situation intolerable and walked out; Phil Brown was appointed and had an horrendous short spell in charge, by which time angry fans wanted better players to watch along with more accountability and the truth from the board of Derby County regarding the real state of play with the club’s finances.

Some (fortunately) refused to believe the glib spin and denials about the real state of the club’s finances and queried the motives of those in charge, even as those now convicted secretly siphoned money away for themselves from Jeremy’s ‘train set’.  RamsTrust investigated the background of Derby County’s board members during 2004-05 and uncovered some of the financial maze surrounding the club, compiling a large information dossier that was passed to local and national media and other parties.

RamsTrust were aware that heavy fines, points’ deductions and even relegation have been inflicted on other clubs found guilty of financial irregularities - indeed, Brian Clough’s Derby team were banned from European competition in the early Seventies when the club was found guilty of administrative offences.

Local and national media learned more and more of the precarious nature of Derby’s ailing condition before RamsTrust petitioned the bank in December 2005 to urge them to take notice of concerns about Derby’s accounting. Even as the writing was on the wall through growing protests, with local suitors making formal declarations to take the club over, the denials and obstruction still came from Mr Keith and Co until it was futile to resist demands for them to step down.

Peter Gadsby has commented since the sentences were served that there could have been serious consequences for the club from the football authorities because of the gravity of the offences committed by the former regime. On top of the requirement to reconstruct the club’s finances from a £50m debt, such penalties would have been crippling. Gadsby acted promptly on the information he’d received to alert the football authorities and police, so that possible sanctions against the club were avoided.

The celebrations following Gadsby’s takeover success were hearty indeed but such was the damage inflicted by previous maladministration, the club was now well in excess of £50m in debt and there was the immediate requirement to re-secure ownership of the stadium by paying off ABC and other necessary settlements, which left the club stretched.

We’d ‘Reclaimed the Rams’ but Derby hadn’t enough money to complete the transformation beyond the Championship level. Unfortunately, Billy Davies spent whatever funds were available rather badly.

The whirlwind promotion was welcome and exciting - and of course benefited the club by some £60m over the course of the single Premier League season with TV income and parachute payments to follow. Unfortunately in these times, it takes that amount to operate a club the size of Derby County and to pay wage demands of Premiership contracts - even if players recruited are not worth the vast outlay needed.

The new regime just could not fund a competitive team at that level and ultimately did not possess the harmony and togetherness upon which more solid foundations are built. Derby’s history of salvaging itself and then plunging back into deep debt and decline continued to repeat itself.

The latest reconstruction came about through the appointment of Adam Pearson and subsequent sale of the club to the GSE consortium. Maybe big funding will be accessible eventually? Derby County is now poised on another road to recovery, despite the traumas. The terrain may be firmer this time around and less undulating - so let’s hope we are soon cheering the Rams to promotion and better times together.