The joint administrators are very
much aware of the heightened speculation as to the future of Derby
County Football Club - such speculation was not helped by yesterday’s
press reports following a meeting of the EFL board yesterday.
This statement hopefully addresses some of the concerns as well as setting out the current position in relation to the administration.
As we have previously reported there has been considerable interest from a number of credible parties. There are currently 3 parties who have made offers. One of the Joint Administrators duties is to act in the interest of all creditors, and this includes secured creditors, preferential creditors and the unsecured (“ ordinary “) creditors owed monies by the club. In relation to a football insolvency this duty is further compounded by dealing with those creditors known as “football creditors” which need to be dealt with in order to protect the club’s ongoing membership of the English Football League.
The Joint Administrators have an exit plan ready to implement and be approved by creditors and this is with a view to adjusting offers received to accommodate the EFL insolvency policy and their requirements to creditors.
The difficulty and currently, in our view, the last remaining significant obstacle is to deal with certain claims that are very much disputed but which we are being advised by the EFL cannot be currently compromised notwithstanding statute says otherwise. Whilst we accept this is frustrating for all, none of the interested parties are able to progress matters further until such time that an agreement can be reached.
Linked to the above is the need to ensure the club can be funded, if needs be, over the coming months or until we have successfully completed a sale. The EFL have demanded that we prove adequate funding is in place and until as such time as we are able to do that, they will not progress player registrations – this includes some players where contracts needed to be extended this month. Whilst we have a number of options as to how that funding can be delivered, we are not, today, in a position to finalise this funding however we do believe this will be finalised in the coming weeks.
We are aware of yesterday’s press comments, however, the position is not straight forward bearing in mind the position of other stakeholders. We are urgently seeking clarification from the EFL as to why these disputed claims cannot be compromised.