Derby ask Google to remove ‘irrelevant’ references to Premier League future

Derby County are set to become the first football club to take advantage of new internet privacy laws giving EU citizens the “right to be forgotten”.

The European Union’s Court of Justice ruled last month that Google must delete “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” links from its search results upon request.

Google began accepting requests last Friday, receiving around 12,000 submissions on the first day alone, one of which was from Derby County FC requesting all references to them playing in the Premier League next season be removed.

A spokesman for the club said: “Clearly the idea of Derby ever playing in the Premier League again is no longer relevant. In the lead-up to our play-off final game against QPR there was a lot of speculation on this matter, but we are asking Google to remove all links to this silly talk to save us further embarrassment.

“We are also requesting that they remove links to interviews with players before the match in which they talked about ‘making the fans proud’ and ‘not letting you down’, especially those involving Richard Keogh, as this information is clearly inadequate and misleading.

“Finally, we would like Google to remove all boasting about a victory over our local rivals, Nottingham Forest, in September 2011, after which supporters gloated ‘We only had ten men’.

“It has now come to our attention that losing to a team with 10 players on the pitch is actually quite a common occurrence in football and certainly not cause to arrange costly fly-over stunts as some of our misguided supporters believed at the time.

“Furthermore, someone has pointed out to us that the manager who allowed Forest to slip to such a humiliating defeat is actually now our head coach. We’d like Google’s help to erase this inconvenient fact from the history books, something we will also be requesting them to do with Ishmael Miller’s goal-scoring record when Steve McClaren inevitably signs him on a free transfer this summer.”

However, internet free speech campaigners have criticised Derby’s request. Ken Ackumin, from pressure group Open Doors, told us: “This EU ruling threatens to completely re-write the rulebook as far as search engines go.

“I hope that Google treat the request from Derby County with the contempt it deserves – after all, giving people the chance to laugh their arses off at Derby’s expense is one of the internet’s most important purposes.”

The search results Derby don’t want you to see: