Derby County faithful must find Blackpool FC transfer news hard to believe | OneFootball

Blackpool have signed Malcolm Ebiowei on a permanent basis after a jump to the Premier League from Derby to Crystal Palace didn't work out.

Derby County fans may be shocked to see that Malcolm Ebiowei, a player they lost to Crystal Palace as an 18-year-old, is on his way to League One just three years on.

There will be surprise among Derby County fans to see such an exciting young prospect as Ebiowei move down to League One, but the player's career hasn't caught light since his arrival at Selhurst Park in the summer of 2022.

Ebiowei had impressed early in his career with the Rams. He'd already passed through the academies at Chelsea, Arsenal and Rangers by the time he arrived at Pride Park, but it didn't take long for him to make an impression there. He made his senior debut in February 2022 with a brief cameo against Hull City and excelled under Wayne Rooney at the tender age of 18 for the remainder of the campaign, dazzling supporters with his explosive pace and array of tricks.

He left Derby at the end of that season for Crystal Palace. At just 18-years-old, a bright future awaited him, but three years on he's now on his way to League One.

Ex-Derby County star Malcolm Ebiowei has a chance to reignite his career at Blackpool

It had been previously reported by journalist Alan Nixon that Blackpool were looking to take Ebiowei on loan from Crystal Palace, so the announcement that his move to Bloomfield Road was going to be a permanent one was a bit of a surprise.

This certainly would have been in line with their previous loan of full-back Danny Imray, who'd been at Palace since 2021 but had spent most of that time out on loan. Imray had previously been on loan at non-league Chelmsford City and League Two Bromley, so his arrival is a step up the career ladder, and the fact that Palace have retained ownership of him indicates that they still see a potential future for him at their club.

But Ebiowei has arrived at Blackpool from the opposite direction. The decision to make the arrangement a permanent one means that Palace have decided that the transfer didn't work out at all and that they wished to move him on altogether.

Ebiowei's previous chances at resetting his career have fallen flat after Derby County exit

In the first place, it looked as though everything was going to plan for Malcolm Ebiowei at Crystal Palace after his move there in June 2022. He was on the bench for their first League game of the 2022-23 season against Arsenal and made a brief appearance in place of Eberechi Eze.

But after that, the first half of that season saw him warming the bench at Selhurst Park. He made two further brief appearances from the bench - 15 minutes in October against Everton and 12 minutes against Nottingham Forest a month later - but that and a couple of similarly truncated appearances in the EFL Cup, which included missing the decisive penalty in a shootout against Newcastle United, were as much as he could manage.

Then came spells on loan, none of which amounted to very much either. He was at Hull City for the second half of the 2022-23 season, but could only manage 12 appearances for them. The first half of the 2023-24 season saw him back warming the bench at Selhurst Park, and at the end of the January 2024 transfer window he was sent to one of then-co-owner John Textor's clubs, RWD Molenbeek, but only made five appearances there, as well.

Ebiowei's first chance of a reset came in the summer of 2024, when he was sent on a season-long loan to Oxford United, but again things didn't work out. He made just six appearances for the club throughout the first half of last season, and his loan was cancelled at the start of the January 2025 transfer window.

Now 21 years of age, Malcolm Ebiowei has made 44 appearances in his entire career, and only a couple of them - one for Molenbeek and for Oxford at Coventry in the EFL Cup last season - have come in a starting eleven. His only senior goal came more than three years ago for Derby County against, ironically enough, Blackpool.

The player has had chances. He's already played for five clubs. With a permanent move to Blackpool, he has a chance of a definitive reset. But he needs to make it work this time, because such opportunities aren't a birthright, and this is a huge opportunity; he'll be under the tutelage of one of the most experienced coaches around in the form of Steve Bruce.

But Derby County supporters could be forgiven for wondering how it ended up going so wrong, and they must be surprised to see him moving to Blackpool just three years after earning a shot in the Premier League following a series of dazzling displays at Pride Park.