Richard Keogh has been awarded a payout of £2.3million (€2.67m) for wrongful dismissal from his former club Derby County.
In October 2019, Keogh was sacked by Derby following his involvement in a car crash with teammates Tom Lawrence and Mason Bennett.
The 34-year old defender was a passenger in the car that crashed into a lamppost the previous month. Despite Lawrence and Bennett keeping their jobs, Keogh was dismissed after failing to accept drastically reduced terms.
Keogh had been earning £24,000 per week plus bonuses at the time, with a contract due to run until June 2021.
It's believed Keogh's role as captain and the added responsibility the position brings was a factor in the incident.
At the time, Derby said they "will not tolerate any of its players or staff behaving in a manner which puts themselves, their colleagues, and members of the general public at risk of injury or worse, or which brings the club into disrepute".
Keogh had been an integral part of then manager Mick McCarthy's Republic of Ireland squad, but effectively had his international career ended by the injuries sustained in September 2019.
Now at Huddersfield Town, Keogh took his case to the EFL in January of last year complete with the backing of the PFA.
On Tuesday, an EFL statement confirmed they'd found in favour of Keogh.
"The League Appeals Committee has heard and dismissed an appeal under the Regulations of the EFL by Derby County (“the Club”) against the decision of the Player Related Dispute Commission (“the PRDC”) in the case of Richard Keogh," they said.
"The case arose out of events on 24 September 2019 in which Mr Keogh was seriously injured in a road traffic accident and his subsequent dismissal by the Club.
"The PRDC held that Mr Keogh had not committed gross misconduct, that he had not brought the Club into serious disrepute, and that he had been wrongfully dismissed by the Club."
The finding in favour of Keogh is a further blow to Derby, who could still be relegated to League One.
Wayne Rooney's side avoided the drop, courtesy of a draw with Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday.
However, the EFL has confirmed it has won an appeal to find Derby in breach of financial fair play rules.
They were found to have altered the value of their players in their accounts, aka amortisation, something which is against EFL rules.
An independent league arbitrary panel concluded that a "Disciplinary Commission was wrong to dismiss the League’s expert accountancy evidence, which demonstrated that the Club’s policy regarding the amortisation of player registrations was contrary to standard accounting rules.
"More specifically, the panel determined that the Club’s policy was not in accordance with accounting standard FRS102 because it failed to accurately reflect the manner in which the Club takes the benefit of player registrations over the lifetime of a player’s contract."
A points deduction could await, and anything of a point or more - applied to this season - will see them fall into the third tier of English football.
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