Derby County's Near Sale to Saudi Official and Future Ambitions

Derby County were an hour away from changing hands. The paperwork was ready, the approvals in place, the future seemingly mapped out.

Then the deal vanished.

Rams chief executive Stephen Pearce has revealed just how close owner David Clowes came to selling the club to Saudi government official Turki Al‑Sheikh in August – and why Derby’s quietly spoken owner has since doubled down on his Premier League dream instead of walking away.

A sale that died on the line

Clowes, the Derbyshire property developer and lifelong supporter who rescued Derby from administration in the summer of 2022, had agreed to hand over control of the Championship side to Al‑Sheikh.

The proposed takeover had cleared the key hurdles. Both the Independent Football Regulator (IFR) and the English Football League (EFL) had sanctioned the deal. Inside Pride Park, people were preparing for a new era.

Then Al‑Sheikh pulled out.

No long run-up. No drawn-out collapse. Just a sudden withdrawal that stunned the club.

“The wind was taken out of our sails, totally,” Pearce told BBC Radio Derby. “We weren't expecting it to fall down, effectively, an hour before we thought it was going to complete.”

For weeks, Derby had operated in what Pearce called a “holding pattern” while the bid was scrutinised, stuck in limbo for a large part of the summer transfer window as the takeover process dragged on. When the answer finally came, it was “completely out of the blue”.

The mood could easily have turned sour. Instead, Pearce says the reaction inside the club was immediate and defiant.

“We regrouped and everybody got back on the horse,” he said. “It was like, right, how do we go again? And let's crack on with what we wanted to do.”

Clowes spends big – while expecting to sell

The twist in the story is that Derby were already spending heavily while Clowes believed he was on the brink of selling up.

The owner had signed off a budget and committed to recruitment as the takeover talks rumbled on. The money going out, he knew, was money he would never see again if the deal completed.

It did not stop him.

The club paid £6m to bring Bobby Clark in on a permanent deal from RB Salzburg. They agreed a loan-to-buy move for Sam Szmodics from Ipswich worth £2.7m. Around £600,000 went on Alex Mowatt from West Bromwich Albion.

All of it funded by Clowes while he thought he was about to hand over the keys.

“This is why he's such an incredible owner,” Pearce said. “He thought the takeover was going to happen, he knew he was never going to get a penny back for all of that money he spent on those players and he still did it.”

“He could have quite easily, on 1 July, said to us and said to John [head coach John Eustace], ‘look, I think this is going through, the signs are the club is going to be sold, you're just going to have to wait because every penny I put into transfers now I'm not going to get back’.

“And he didn't. He backed it regardless and that's why we're in such a strong position.”

Off the market – and pushing on

Clowes has never hidden his desire to bring in extra investment to fuel Derby’s push back to the Premier League. The agreement with Al‑Sheikh – a powerful figure in Saudi government circles and a major player in world boxing – looked like the breakthrough.

For a club that finished just outside the play-off places last season, it felt like a launchpad.

When the deal collapsed, Clowes made a decisive call. Derby County were taken off the market. The focus switched from selling the club to strengthening it.

The spending did not stop with Clark, Szmodics and Mowatt. After the aborted takeover, Derby pushed ahead again. The biggest outlay was £4m on David Ozoh from Crystal Palace. There was a string of free transfers and loans, capped by a deadline-day reunion with Eiran Cashin.

The message from the boardroom was clear: the promotion plan survives the failed takeover.

Asked directly whether the disrupted summer had “stalled” Derby’s Premier League ambitions, Pearce did not flinch.

“Not in the slightest, otherwise we wouldn't have spent all the money we've spent,” he said. “We want to push on. We want progression this season.”

The owner who almost walked away is now paying, once more, to drive Derby forward. The question is no longer whether the club will be sold.

It’s whether Clowes’ gamble can finally haul the Rams back to the top flight he believes they belong in.