On a roll with back-to-back promotions BY the summer of 1986, Arthur Cox was well established as the manager of Derby County. After the dark days of the early 1980s, which had culminated in the Rams being relegated to the Third Division – and almost going out of business into the bargain – the club’s fortunes had been revived.

And, if the Third Division promotion season of 1985-6 was memorable, the Rams’ first season back in the Second Division was sensational, despite getting off to a bad start.

Oldham Athletic, supposedly an ordinary Second Division team, came to the Baseball Ground and won 1-0. Yet, as often happens, the opening day’s result was a poor predictor of final placings.

This proved to be the Rams’ only home defeat in League games in 1986-7.

Once again Cox had improved the team with new signings, especially full-backs Mel Sage from Gillingham (£60,000) and Michael Forsyth, who came from West Bromwich Albion the previous March (£20,000).

Two other signings, Steve Cross from Shrewsbury Town (£60,000) and Mark Lillis from Manchester City (£200,000), had misfortune with injuries at first. Trevor Christie (valued at £100,000) went to Manchester City as part of the Lillis deal.

Phil Gee, a bargain signing from non-League Gresley Rovers at an eventual cost of £5,000, was brought in early in September after Lillis (knee injury) had a painful meeting with Crystal Palace’s giant centre-half Mickey Droy.

Gee, only 21 at the time, began to show a two-footed appetite for Second Division goals.

The season began to spark at the end of September when West Brom visited the Baseball Ground for the first leg of a second-round Littlewoods Cup-tie.

The Rams had stayed in the competition by virtue of away goals at Chester after losing the home leg 1-0. Now, they conceded a seventh-minute goal to Albion, before goals by Chandler and Davison, mid-way through the first half, brought them the lead.

The final score was 4-1. The Rams won the second leg 1-0 at the Hawthorns but, in between, lost a League game at the same venue.

Then came Sunderland at home. Two down after 30 minutes. Goals by Sage, Forsyth and Davison turned the game around to finish Derby County 3 Sunderland 2. And it wasn’t the last rescue of the season.

In mid-October, captain Rob Hindmarch returned after a cartilage injury to play at Shrewsbury. In the dying seconds, he headed down Micklewhite’s corner and Gee prodded in the winner.

Against Ipswich, Bobby Davison scored a last-minute winner, again reminding supporters that an Arthur Cox side fought till the final whistle. In fact, it took an illegal whistle from a 17-year-old spectator to slow them down against Aston Villa in a third-round Littlewoods Cup game, Tony Daley giving the First Division side the lead after the Rams defence hesitated.

Graham Harbey, who had replaced Chandler in the number 11 shirt, cracked in a right-footed equaliser. The Rams lost the replay 2-1.

Inspired in midfield by Geraint “George” Williams (Player of the Year) and John Gregory, who volleyed superb goals against Brighton and Sheffield United, the Rams were seventh at the start of November and fourth a month later.

It was the most open promotion race for years. Oldham and Portsmouth were possible promotion candidates and another contender, Plymouth Argyle, denied Derby two points with a last-minute equaliser at Home Park.

The day after Boxing Day saw the Rams play Barnsley at home. Two down with the game barely begun, a quick reply from Gee and second-half goals by Davison and Gregory pulled the game round to finish Derby County 3 Barnsley 2.

The club went top of the Second Division.

After a quiet January, Nigel Callaghan arrived from Watford for £140,000, some of the money coming from Charlie Palmer’s move to Hull City.

Callaghan was moving to a club in a lower division and, like Gregory, Micklewhite, Christie, Lillis, MacLaren and Wallington before him, said he was persuaded by the club’s potential.

Some financial wizards questioned whether the club could afford First Division wages. Then they also pointed out that the club’s main sponsor, Sportsweek magazine, had had a disastrous start with the Maxwell empire, causing the club to change sponsor – to Maxwell’s BPCC – late in the season.

However, most fans were relieved that football, not finance, was making the news. The general feeling was that Ian Maxwell, now in his third season as chairman, had brought dignity to the club and more than a little success.

Birmingham City at home, early in February: two down at half-time, a couple from Gee rescued this one. Recovery was becoming a habit.

On March 18, the Rams went top of the table after beating Blackburn 3-2 and they stayed top till the end of the season.

Good away form was again a feature of the team. The total number of away wins reached a club record 11 with a run of success in the New Year. In the previous 20 years, only Birmingham (1984-85) and Blackpool (1967-68) had won more away games as a Second Division side.

Unbeaten for 13 League games, the team finally lost at Blackburn, with Simon Garner’s two goals taking him to 11 in nine games against the Rams.

But Derby County were awash in success and now the Reserves had lost only one of their last 18 games. A second successive Central League championship proved only a few points out of range.

Back in Division Two, a brave diving header by Lillis, his first and only goal for the club, beat Bradford City and a 2-1 win against Leeds United made certain of promotion to the First Division.

It was more success for hard graft and honest effort and Arthur Cox, Bell’s Second Division Manager of the Year, showed no sign of relaxing his grip on discipline.

“You can find my secret by wringing out my shirt at the end of every working day,” Cox told Ram Magazine editor Harry Brown, who had himself worked very hard to maintain the First Division standard of the club’s official programme.

The Rams needed a point to ensure the championship. It was available at Reading in the penultimate game, but the players again showed a scriptwriter’s knack for a well-paced plot by losing 2-0.

One-nil down to Plymouth, they produced the season’s final recovery to score three times in the last 10 minutes and win 4-2.

Although Wallington and Sage missed the run-in with injury, they had played a large part, as did their deputies, Steele and Blades.

Gregory, MacLaren and Micklewhite were ever-present, the latter two having played in all 88 League games of two successive promotion seasons that had carried the club on a wave of success from Third to First.

On June 25, 1987, Robert Maxwell, the new Rams chairman, sat in the London offices of the Daily Mirror and announced to the world that Derby County had signed 37-year-old England international goalkeeper Peter Shilton.

It was proclaimed by Maxwell as a £1m deal, although less than £100,000 went to Southampton. The rest was covered by salary and incentives over a three-year contract but it needed Derby to win everything to reach the £1m mark.

Some doubted the wisdom of a three-year contract, pointing to the goalkeeper’s age, but others remarked on Shilton’s extraordinary dedication to his art.

Students of economics totted up what it meant to the wage bill, but they were relieved when season-ticket sales soared in the days after the news was announced.

The new First Division season started with a sending-off in the fourth minute – Luton Town’s Mick Harford for a bad tackle on Mel Sage. Gregory’s goal brought a 1-0 win for Derby.

The next home crowd saw another new star, England international Mark Wright, signed for £760,000 from Southampton.

Derby County had never paid so much for a player. The message was clear: only the best would do. But Robert Maxwell stipulated two conditions: the maintenance of immaculate behaviour at the Baseball Ground; and average home-match attendances of more than 20,000.

As well as Wright, the Baseball Ground crowd was treated to its first sight of Wimbledon and some B Stand spectators requested the stand’s roof be removed so they could see more of the Dons’ best passes.

A boring 1-0 defeat was a portent of their visits to come and showed that the transition to Division One would not be effected overnight.

A few days later Mark Lillis went to Aston Villa for £130,000.

On September 26, four days after the Rams had lost a first-leg game 1-0 at Southend United in the Littlewoods Cup, Robert Maxwell helicoptered in to see his first game at the Baseball Ground.

The visitors were Oxford United. Derby lost 1-0 and Maxwell left well before the finish.

Rams supporters began to register Maxwell’s appearances at games with the same sort of surprise they showed if a manager was missing on a scouting trip.

The chairman, meanwhile, reiterated the importance of 20,000-plus attendances in order to maintain a squad of high-quality players.

The Oxford game was the fifth at home. Only one had been won. The average attendance was 15,804.

Bobby Davison went to Leeds United for £350,000 and the Rams went out of the Littlewoods Cup, drawing 0-0 at home to Southend in the second leg. It was only the second time in the club’s history they had gone out of this competition to a club two divisions below them.

Before other players could be signed, Maxwell tried to buy Watford from Elton John. That was eventually blocked by the Football League but, while it lasted, the situation effectively meant that Derby County would not be dealing in the transfer market.

Watford came to the Baseball Ground early in December and drew 1-1, Mark Wright’s goal helping to extend the Rams’ unbeaten run to five games.

The average attendance was 16,701, although that included the game against Chelsea, shown live on television. Millions saw Durie’s penalty smack Shilton’s goalpost and second-half goals scored by Steve Cross and John Gregory, now captaining the team.

Maxwell took a place in the centre of a team photograph and the sponsor’s name on Derby County shirts was now “Maxwell” rather than BPCC. The company had changed its name.

With Davison transferred, Gee not as effective in the First Division and Micklewhite out for six months with an Achilles tendon injury, the attack relied heavily on Nigel Callaghan.

However, the Rams went into the top half of the table with goals from Cross (at Charlton) and Andy Garner, who scored two against Coventry.

Then came a very bad spell. Eight successive League defeats, the last seven by the odd goal, plus one against Chelsea in the FA Cup was an unwanted club record.

The signing of Ted “The Tin Man” McMinn, from Seville for £300,000 at the end of January, provided a fillip. The former Rangers player immediately excited the Baseball Ground crowd, sweeping past opponents with gangling speed and entertaining with the odd silent-movie jest.

In his first home game, he demonstrated the spectacular with a stunning 30-yarder against Manchester United. Unfortunately, he was soon to undergo a hernia operation.

Within two months, the Rams had slumped from the top half to fourth from bottom (the play-off position; in those days the play-offs also involved clubs on the way down) and average home attendance was only 16,948.

The next game was at Oxford United, scene of so many Maxwell triumphs. Oxford had gone 12 games without a win. The goalless draw was painfully predictable.

A 1-0 win against West Ham in the next match – Callaghan headed the goal, McMinn missed a penalty – was the first win for three months and led to a relegation-saving run of good results.

The most atmospheric was an excellent 1-1 draw against Liverpool, culminating in an 85th-minute equaliser from Mick Forsyth, whose defensive displays earned him the mantle of Supporters’ Player of the Year.

The 2-1 win against Newcastle United on April 4 was only the second at home in more than four months. Even so, the attendance was 18,591, taking the season’s average to 17,597.

The atmosphere in April was not helped by news that Maxwell had invited Johan Cruyff to be Derby County’s new technical director.

Arthur Cox, having learned this from Maxwell’s Daily Mirror uncharacteristically hit out angrily at his chairman. Cox showed his faith in the existing coaching staff and felt that new players were more crucial than a new technical director.

Cruyff went to Barcelona instead.

With Frank Stapleton having arrived on loan from Ajax Amsterdam, the Rams could field five internationals – Shilton, Wright, Williams, Gregory and Stapleton – but a home defeat by Queen’s Park Rangers restored relegation trouble with three to play.

The next game was against Southampton and Shilton equalled an all-time Football League record with his 824th League appearance.

A 2-0 win against the Saints and two excellent draws – at Watford (where Shilton broke the record) and at home to Everton – kept the Rams out of the relegation play-offs by a point.

Hindmarch had returned for the last part of the season and, along with Shilton, Blades, Forsyth and Wright, provided solid defensive cover as the Rams edged closer to safety.

The final goals against tally was more fitting to a team seventh in the table rather than 15th, the Rams’ final placing.

It was obvious where the weakness was. The joint leading goalscorers, Gregory and Gee, each had the lowest tally (six League goals) of any Rams top goalscorer in history.

Adapted from The Derby County Story by Anton Rippon and Andrew Ward.

In the second part of his look back at the Arthur Cox years, Anton Rippon (above) considers the high of back-to-back promotions followed by the scramble to avoid relegation.

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