Derby are back. Not yet anywhere near their highest heights; the quest for Premier League football remains an ambition for some unspecified point in the future at the conclusion of what has been a wholesale rebuild of a club that came perilously close to disappearing altogether.
But, after the extent of their recent plight, the unbridled joy of this 2-0 final-day win over already relegated Carlisle to seal automatic promotion back to the Championship means a return to where a club like this belongs.
Crowned English champions more recently than Tottenham and Newcastle, their outlier status in League One – with an average attendance in excess of 27,000 – has ended after two seasons. They will not expect to play third-tier football again any time soon.
It was September 2021 that their financial woes plunged such depths that Derby entered into a sorry 282-day period of administration, resulting in a 21-point deduction and the end of their 14-year stint in the Championship.
Local businessman, lifelong fan and saviour David Clowes ploughed an emergency £55m to keep the club afloat. Without it, he said, they were a week away from going bust.
Yet it has been no straightforward route back. A failure to reach the playoffs last season was followed by a tumultuous start to the current campaign when a not insignificant portion of the fanbase called for Paul Warne to be dismissed.
The hierarchy stuck by him – “we’re trying to build a new team, a new club, really,” pleaded the manager – results improved and the expectant supporters descended on a sold-out Pride Park on Saturday knowing a point would be enough to render results elsewhere obsolete.
Nerves were swiftly eased when Max Bird – playing his final match for the club before departing for Bristol City in the summer – unleashed a thunderbolt from 20 yards to beat Harry Lewis’s despairing dive after five minutes.
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Cut adrift at the foot of the table after their relegation was confirmed at the start of the month, Carlisle provided as firm a test as they could. But when James Collins scored his 19th goal of the season – prodded home from close range just before the hour mark – the party could truly begin.