Key Takeaways
- Derby County's Ben Osborn is back with his hometown club after a long stint with Sheffield United, which included two seasons in the Premier League.
- Osborn spoke to RG about the Blades' impressive 2019-20 campaign in the top flight where they got as high as fifth in the table before COVID-19 hit.
- “You had a very clear style of play, everyone knew their roles inside out, and there was a really good squad of players that were desperate to get into the team," Osborn stated.
Ben Osborn when he played for Sheffield United (Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
“You definitely feel the pressure.”
That’s how Derby County midfielder Ben Osborn described what it is like to play in a relegation battle with his hometown club.
Osborn was born in Derby and played briefly for the club’s youth team. He rejoined Derby County last season after a spell in the Premier League with Sheffield United.
He says that playing for Derby takes him back to being a real youngster and falling in love with the game. “All my roots are here and all my friends are here and family and stuff like that,” but “You understand how much of a big club Derby is… if anything, the fans and the city expects them to be pushing, if not in, the top-flight of English football.”
That ambition can be seen by the signing this summer of US national team striker Patrick Agyemang. Derby had a bit of a striker crisis last season, even signing Kemar Roofe on a short-term deal to give them some more depth, and fans are hoping Agyemang can get the goals to blast the Rams up the league. Agyemang is still recovering from a hernia and “he’s just finding his feet at the moment” so Osborn is yet to see him in training, but says “I’ve said if he needs anything, to give me a shout,” and that “I’m always pushing Derby on people and trying to get people to move into the city when they sign and bring some money into the city.”
From Soccer Star to Pub Landlord
One of those places Agyemang could visit is the Lonely Boy Bar, a micro-pub owned by Osborn and one of his friends. He says “we’d always chat about it,” and when his friend came up with a business plan, initially for a restaurant, they decided to go for it. “There was a run-down hairdressers in the village around the corner and then we went from restaurant and we said, ‘well, why don’t we just try a little microbar first to see if we can make it work.’” The pub often hosts local bands and does music quizzes, with Osborn saying “We both love our music and we go and watch gigs all the time and we wanted to just put a stamp on it with our music taste and we have all our favorite artists and records on the wall.” One of his other friends even wrote an album about the bar and its regulars.
Osborn said everyone gave him advice, but he ignored most of it and set up the bar on his terms, choosing the décor and music that he was interested in and making every mistake under the sun. While the pub industry in the UK is really struggling these days, the lower running costs of a micropub and the trend of people drinking locally rather than heading to the city center has helped the Lonely Boy Bar thrive, and “if anything, it’s gotten busier over the years we’ve been open.”
Storming The Premier League
Before returning to Derby, Osborn played for local rivals Nottingham Forest and then Sheffield United in the Premier League. In 2019-20, Sheffield took the top flight by storm, playing a unique “overlapping center backs” system and pushing as high as fifth in the table in February just before soccer in the UK was paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Blades eventually finished ninth but beat the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea, and Tottenham Hotspur that season. Osborn says the key to that success was that “You had a very clear style of play, everyone knew their roles inside out, and there was a really good squad of players that were desperate to get into the team.” For many of the players, it was the first time playing in the Premier League, and “the hunger was immense.”
Osborn played 61 games in the Premier League and was also part of the 2023-24 Sheffield United team that was one of the three newly promoted sides to be relegated that season. All three promoted teams also got relegated the following season, adding to the narrative that the gap between the Premier League and the EFL Championship, English soccer’s second tier, is widening.
So, can any of the three promoted sides of Sunderland, Burnley, or Leeds United stay up this season? Osborn says:
“It becomes difficult for those who go from dominating possession in the Championship… and then go to the Premier League and you almost have to change styles.”
He says with Sheffield United in 2019-20, “they played the exact same way straight away” and head coach “Chris Wilder made one little tweak in midfield, instead of a ‘number 10’ he went for a midfield three, it was a bit more defensively solid but in essence the rest of it stayed the same.”
Osborn says the three promoted teams this year have made so many signings that they are hardly the same teams that he played against in the Championship last season but “last year, obviously Leeds were excellent, Burnley were defensively unbelievable last year, Sunderland were young and exciting” and while all three are probably favorites to go down, if one of the teams can “get their home form really rocking” they could stay up and change the narrative around promoted clubs.
How to Score a Wondergoal
Before Sheffield United, Osborn spent 16 years as a youth player and first team player at Derby County’s local rivals Nottingham Forest where he scored this incredible volleyed free kick (1:28). He says he used to practice it in the back garden and got very consistent, so then tried it in training and was scoring three or four times out of five. Since scoring, he has tried the same technique a few more times and has been waiting for an opportunity to do it again, but he says “my range is very specific, it’s literally between about 20 and 23 yards out, anything further, it doesn’t really work, anything closer, it doesn’t really work.”
At Forest, Osborn played under a merry-go-round of head coaches from club legends like Stuart Pearce and Martin O’Neil to the likes of Mark Warburton and Aitor Karanka. Ironically, this constant stream of new head coaches piqued his interest in becoming a coach himself.
At a really young age, Osborn started his coaching badges, and as well as playing professional soccer, he was coaching every week from the age of 23.
He runs a company called EFD Sport and Education that coaches youngsters at around 25 schools in the East Midlands and also uses grassroots coaching to help improve students’ behavior, saying he’s seen kids on the verge of exclusion from school completely change because they’ve now had a role model to look up to. With top flight coaches like Russell Martin or Fabian Hurzeler seemingly younger every year, coaching so much while still playing could put Osborn one step ahead of his peers, but he says the sacrifices that top coaches make are huge and the hours are relentless, so it would be a big decision whether to push for that once he finishes his playing career.
As for this season at Derby County, Osborn says there was a lot of detail in pre-season working on things and that the club is still trying to bring in a few more players. But, “we definitely want to be a lot higher than we finished last year” and want to be competing toward the top end of the Championship and looking upwards. He says “that’s definitely the ambition of the club.”
