LIKE Jack Walker and Sir Jack Hayward, Lionel Pickering spent the middle part of his life building a business empire, but returned in later life to the love of his childhood, to take control of the football club he had supported as a boy. But while Hayward has yet to take his beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers back to the top flight of English football, and Walker, contrastingly, brought the Premier League title to Blackburn Rovers, Pickering’s legacy at Derby County was decidedly ambiguous.
Having accumulated a multi-million-pound fortune in the local newspaper industry, being a pioneer in the field of free newspapers decades before they became a nationwide business, Pickering purchased Derby County for £13 million in 1991, the year they were relegated from the original first division. He appointed a new manager, ploughed millions into signing new players, and Derby were subsequently promoted to the Premier League in 1996.
Pickering was also one of the first to recognise that, in the era after the Taylor report, rather than modifying existing stadiums invariably situated in expensive, inner-city locations, it would be financially expedient to sell such real estate and construct a new out-of-town stadium on cheaper land. He was instrumental in helping Derby move from the Baseball Ground to the purpose-built Pride Park in 1997.
While his idea was right in theory, not all went to plan in practice. If anything, he spent too generously at Derby, often on players who failed to live up to the transfer fee. The team were unable to consolidate their position in the Premier League, being relegated in 2002 to England’s second tier, where they remain.
The financial picture was even worse. By 2001 Derby County was losing £10 million a year and had accumulated debts of £30 million, and two years later Pickering was forced from his position. It was a miserable ending, and one that weighed heavy on him in his final years, for he had sought to bring joy to the club’s supporters principally because he regarded himself as one of them.
Advertisement
Lionel Abraham Pickering was born in 1932 and was a Derby County supporter from the start. He began his life as a sports reporter for the Derby Evening Telegraph before trying his luck as a “£10 Pom”, moving to Australia where he worked for the Sydney Sun and where he met his wife, Marcia. Upon returning he resolved in 1966 to establish a free newspaper, the Derby Trader, funded entirely by advertising.
He initially ran the operation from his mother’s house and wrote and delivered many of the initial editions himself. Over the next 20 years his Trader Group spread across the Midlands, as he developed sister editions throughout the region, while he also ran other businesses, including the Derby-based Raymonds press agency.
In 1991, having sold the Trader Group for £25 million two years previously, Pickering spent just over half of that sum to take control of Derby County, and in the two years that ensued he spent almost £10 million on new players. However, apart from Marco Gabbiadini, they were mostly unknowns; many soon came to seem overpriced.
Such signings had not brought about the desired, immediate return to the top flight, and in 1995 Pickering appointed Jim Smith as manager, with Steve McClaren as his No 2.
Within a year Derby were back in the top flight, and in 1996-97 played their first season in the Premier League and their last season at the Baseball Ground, with Pickering and his board of directors having orchestrated the move to Pride Park.
Advertisement
But within five years the club had returned to the second tier and Smith had been shown the door. Pickering dismissed talk of impending financial catastrophe. “The bank is not forcing us into a position where we have to sell our best players,” he insisted in 2001, having off-loaded one of Derby’s key players for £7 million only weeks before. There were calls for Pickering to go and rumours of the club going into administration, to which Pickering unwisely reacted by appearing on Radio Derby to advise his critics: “If you can do better, where’s your money? And if you don’t like it, go and watch Forest.” The club’s loyal supporters were incensed and it soured a previously amicable relationship he had had with them.
His reign ended in 2003 when Derby went into receivership. Control passed to a consortium led by the barrister John Sleightholme, himself to resign three years later, with the club’s difficulties far from resolved.
This year, Pickering had earlier been trying to sell his £5 million mansion, the Grade I listed, 16-bedrom, Lutyens- designed Ednaston Manor, near Derby, as the banks handling Derby County’s debts were still holding his personal guarantees for £2.7 million.
Pickering, despite being an extremely tough businessman, was devoted to the team he had followed from youth to old age, and the way he had parted company with the club remained a source of much sorrow.
His wife died of motor neuron disease some years ago. He is survived by three sons.
Advertisement
Lionel Pickering, businessman, was born on March 5, 1932. He died of cancer on September 2, 2006, aged 74.