Derby County’s £2.5m Reading gamble ultimately backfired

Derby County’s £2.5m Reading gamble ultimately backfired

Even if the Rams were never able to achieve the goal and eventually found themselves in League One, they can at least claim that they never gave up.

There can’t be many supporters who can complain that their team didn’t try to return to the top division in the mid-to-late 2010s, as Derby was one of the Championship’s biggest investors and, some would argue, one of the league’s most desirable clubs to sign.

The club later suffered from a number of off-field financial problems as a result of that significant expenditure, which may have contributed to their subsequent struggles.

The hiring of Nick Blackman, who turned out to be a huge failure in the Midlands, was one financial choice that undoubtedly contributed to that problem.

Even though £2.5 million might not seem like a lot of money in today’s game, nine years ago it was still a fair amount at the Championship level and was said to be the amount Derby paid to secure Blackman’s services from Reading.

After pulling up trees with Reading in the first half of the season, Blackman, who was then among the Championship’s top scorers, attracted a lot of interest from the Rams, according to Derby manager Paul Clement.

Prior to his transfer to Derby in 2015–16, Blackman had scored 11 goals in 25 Championship games, and it was generally believed that he would be the player whose goals secured the Rams’ return to the Premier League. However, those predictions were completely wrong.

In football, players don’t always fit in with a certain team. Blackman, who never fit in at Derby’s attempt to create the Galacticos of the Championship, was definitely not the proper fit.

His Derby time was disastrous, but it’s possible that he was better suited to being a big fish in a smaller pond in Berkshire or that the strain of being the man tipped to lead the club back to the top flight was too much for him.

Blackman’s transfer to Pride Park couldn’t have gone much worse; he failed to score again during the 2015–16 season, and Derby lost the play-offs, so nothing went his way.

That was indicative of his overall dismal performance during his time at Derby, as he only managed one goal for the team, and that was a penalty.

His career was not significantly improved by loan stints to Maccabi Tel Aviv and Sporting Gijon, but the Israeli team saw enough to take him on a free deal in 2019 after his Derby contract expired to end a terrible phase of his career.

Derby lost everything because they received no return on their healthy 2016 investment, but he was never able to regain the kind of form he displayed in that 2015–16 season at Reading for Maccabi, and his career ultimately faded into insignificance.

Due to the Rams’ blindness to Blackman’s early-season 2015–16 performance, he remains one of the club’s most misguided acquisitions to this day.