Derby County's 5 worst managers ever (Ranked) | OneFootball

The Rams have had some exceptional managers over the years including Arthur Cox, Brian Clough and Dave Mackay, but some have missed the mark.

Derby County have been blessed with some of the greatest managers of their generations throughout history.

Brian Clough and Dave Mackay both led the Rams to the First Division title in 1972 and 1975, while Arthur Cox took the club all the way from the third tier to the upper echelons of English football in the space of two years between 1986 and 1988.

However, with the highs have come the lows, and Derby have had many in their 140-year history.

Their lowest point on the pitch arguably came in the 2007/08 campaign, when the team were relegated from the Premier League with just 11 points. But, in more recent times, the Rams found themselves back in the third tier, being relegated from the Championship after a host of financial issues before returning to the second tier for 2024/25.

5 Nigel Pearson

Perhaps lucky to be as high as he is thanks to a victory while he was still technically employed as manager but suspended, Nigel Pearson's time at Derby was not what anybody quite expected.

The former Leicester City manager joined the Rams ahead of the 2016/17 campaign with the expectation of taking the club to the play-offs at the very least.

However, a rocky start meant that fans never truly got on board, and the team struggled early on. He managed 12 games in all competitions, while Chris Powell took charge of another two matches after Pearson had a fallout with then owner Mel Morris.

In those 14 games when he had the title of manager, the now 61-year-old saw victory in just three, giving him a win percentage of just 21.43%, before he was sacked on 8 October 2016 with the Rams 20th in the Championship table.

4 Phil Brown

Phil Brown was another Derby manager to take on a tough task in the 21st century at Pride Park. Unlike Pearson, however, the squad at his disposal was perhaps not at the level to compete towards the upper end of the Championship in the 2005/06 season.

He was brought in during the summer of 2005 following the resignation of George Burley after Tom Huddlestone was sold to Tottenham Hotspur without his knowledge, and the ex-Hull City boss was on the back foot from the start.

Despite a positive start that saw the Rams pick up two wins and two draws from their first four Championship games, it took another two months for Brown to see another three points arrive at Pride Park.

The now 65-year-old was sacked on 30 January 2006 following a 6-1 defeat to Coventry City, leaving him with a win percentage record of just 21.21%.

3 Colin Murphy

Not many other managers have to compete with the fallout following a league title win just 18 months before, but Colin Murphy was entrusted with keeping the Rams in the First Division in the 1976/77 campaign.

He managed to successfully keep Derby away from the dropzone, but after winning just seven of the 35 games he was in charge of, he was sacked in September 1977 with a win percentage of just 20%.

He later went on to have greater success at Lincoln City and Stockport County, with his last job in football coming in 2006, as he took over as the caretaker manager at Hull.

Murphy passed away in September 2023 at the age of 79.

2 Jack Barker

The person to have managed at the earliest time period in this list, Jack Barker's time in charge of the Rams came 14 years after he left the club as a player in 1939 at the start of the Second World War.

He earned 11 caps for England in his playing days, and racked up over 300 appearances for the club after signing for them in 1928.

However, his managerial record was poor, and it was during his time at the club that Derby were relegated to the third tier for the first time in their history in 1955, before he was sacked in April of that year.

1 John Newman

The title of worst Derby in their 140-year history based off of win percentage, unfortunately, goes to John Newman, who was in charge of the team between January 1982 and August 1982 after joining the club three years earlier as the assistant.

It was the start of the Rams' troubles throughout the 1980s that saw them drop into the third tier for the first time in nearly 30 years after the highs of the 1970s, in 1984.

Newman took charge of 35 games at the Baseball Ground, Derby's former home, after a terrible winter in 1981 saw a host of matches in December called off - filling the end of the season with re-arrangements.

The Rams won just six of those matches with Newman in the dugout, cementing the Hereford-born man as the club's worst manager in history in terms of win percentage, taking home two points just 17.14% of the time.