Confirmed: 8 players set to leave Derby County | OneFootball

The Rams are making serious changes to the makeup of their team this summer.

Derby County have confirmed that they will release eight of their players when their contracts expire this summer.

Securing survival in the Championship in their first season back in the division was the first step towards establishing themselves as a regular member of the second tier. They only spent a couple of seasons in League One, but, given the budget that they were working with, it was always going to be tough to stay up, but they did it.

Now the focus is on rebuilding over the summer. The Rams faithful should have full confidence in John Eustace to put a team together that can move them further up the table and away from any relegation trouble, but the squad that he will do it with next time around will be different to the one he's had to work with since joining in mid-February.

Derby confirm large number of first-team departures

In the club's published retained list on Friday morning, Derby have revealed that eight of their players - Tom Barkhuizen, Sonny Bradley, Tyrese Fornah, Jeff Hendrick, Rohan Luthra, Erik Pieters, Kemar Roofe and Conor Washington - won't be returning to Pride Park for pre-season training.

Barkhuizen, 31, and Washington, 32, are a couple of the biggest losses for County. They each played 19 times in the league for Derby this season, while the likes of Hendrick, 33, and Roofe, 32, had much more limited roles.

Pieters, 36, was only involved in one minute of league action for the club in his short spell, after joining them at the end of March, and that was on the final day of the season against Stoke City.

The news of Bradley's departure is fresh off the back of play-off heartbreak for him and his Wycombe Wanderers teammates, who lost 1-0 on aggregate to Charlton Athletic in the semi-finals, missing out on the chance to win promotion at Wembley. The 33-year-old spent the second half of the 2024/25 campaign as a Chairboy loanee.

Fornah, 25, was away from Derby temporarily, too. He played his football for Salford City this season, while 23-year-old Luthra's league action saw him feature twice in the non-leagues for Spennymoor Town in April.

Derby's own loanees - Harrison Armstrong, Marcus Harness, David Ozoh, Nat Phillips, Jerry Yates - will all return to their parent clubs. They are in discussions with Craig Forsyth and Liam Thompson over new deals.

Derby have made smart free agent decisions

All the players that County will let go of come the end of their deals either played little-to-no role in their 24/25 campaign, or should be fairly easy to replace in the transfer window, whether that be through their own free-agent signings or through purchases.

They won't be able to compete monetarily with those at the upper-end of the Championship, but an extra year of second tier money under their belts should give them a little more fiscal breathing room.

Derby did need to get a bit younger - their average squad age was the joint-highest in the league this season.

The moves that they've made should bring that down and maybe give them a bit of a new lease of life heading into the new term.