In the latest in a series of features looking behind the scenes at Pride Park ahead of the new season, Chris Jones chats to chief executive Sam Rush about summer transfers.
IN a small room in the back offices at Pride Park, I am facing the club's chief executive and can see exactly how good a negotiator he is.
For the past few minutes, while I have spoken to John Vicars – the Rams chief operating officer – Sam Rush has sat next to him, fiddling with things.
With John talking in measured terms beside him, Sam has checked his phone a few times, looked up at the ceiling, out of the window and straightened his tie at least twice. Then I mention transfers and he fixes me dead with his gaze, sitting up straight in his seat. This is his territory.
Answers fly at me as fast as I can take them down. For the next few minutes, it is the Sam Rush show.
I ask him how closely he works with manager Nigel Clough when the season ends, to decide which players should be sold and which ones should be brought in.
"We sat down together to talk. We started by naming positions we feel need strengthening," he says.
"Nigel has a strong scouting network and he will gather lists of players who we feel would realistically want to come to Derby and who would work in those positions.
"So we sit down, go through those lists and we identify the financial demands we can expect from each candidate."
At the end of last season, Sam says, one position both men agreed needed looking at was that of striker.
"Nigel said he needed a fast, exciting striker and we had about four players identified whose financial requirements we could meet."
The player who best fitted the attributes was Johnny Russell, a 23-year-old forward who had made his breakthrough with Dundee United, the club with which, at that time, he was still contracted.
Sam talked me through the process of landing the Scot.
"I went to Dundee and met the chairman. We sat down and I asked about Johnny. We talked for a while and they were interested. We agreed a fee, £700,000.
"Sometimes I have gone to a club and spent hours thrashing something out, other times it is quite quick. It depends on how much each party wants it to happen."
Next comes the news leak. At the regional news level, good sports reporters often have a very close relationship with their club's manager and both are aware how much they need this to be maintained, for there to be trust, to achieve their mutual goals.
Sam said: "What it means is that news travels fast. And these days, the newspaper is not the only place to get information. You might break the news of a transfer deal there but the fans have then got a huge amount of places to go and find out more.
"Straight away, as soon as the name Johnny Russell came out, fans went to YouTube and sites like that and saw his highlights videos. They liked him, they were excited by the player.
"And so this pressure grows for you to negotiate decent terms and that was the next step, talking to his agent, talking about his wages."
Players' wages, says Sam, can make or break a club financially, often the latter.
"With many clubs, their wage bill comes to more than the club brings in. You have chief executives who have had extraordinary business sense to make their companies work. Then they get in to football and that sense just flies out of the window.
"There's two reasons for that. One, football is about passion and love and emotion. Businessmen come to it when they've made their money elsewhere and they want their club to succeed in a different, more raw way.
"There's a lot of things tied up in there, the nostalgia of being a fan for so long and so on. And the other thing is the pressure from the fans, who all feel this passion, too.
"Your whole job is done in this 24/7 media glare and fans know every decision, are guessing every rumour and demand results. So this is why so many great businessmen seem to lose that sense when they get into football."
Back to Russell. You've negotiated a good deal, sorted out wages and the deal is, barring formalities like the medical and so on, done. Now to let him meet the team.
Sam said: "We actually collected Johnny from the airport on his way back from a holiday in Tenerife.
''Nigel likes to sign players who know the club a little and have either played on loan or have played with some of the team before and, with Johnny, he was quite comfortable, knowing Craig Bryson."
This summer, six players have arrived at Pride Park and five have been let go. Sam says the club will only sell players if it will enable the squad to be strengthened.
But in what financial context does this happen? John Vicars is the club's chief operating officer and, if Sam Rush does the transfers, John manages the commercial side of the club's operation.
Last year Derby County had a turnover of £17 million. But, as John explained, nearly £11 million of that came solely from sponsorship and corporate hospitality – business off the pitch.
So John's summer is spent making the rounds with the big sponsors, the top businesses and groups, making sure their support can be counted on this season.
He said: "We will go to all our main sponsors and deliver a report about their exposure, how many times they were mentioned on TV, how many times and where their advert appeared.
"And it isn't just the big sponsors we go to – we'll visit people who have a £1,000 advert on a small screen, too."
Another of John's jobs is making sure the club is ready for promotion. He said: "The overall goal is getting into the Premier League. But, within this overall framework, we have worked out short-term goals. So, for example, this year we should finish in the top six in the Championship.
"For that we are targeting 75 points and we are making sure everybody is ready for that. But, when we do get promoted to the Premier League, we want to be ready.
"In the 2006-07 season, the club had just been taken over and we had no real thought of promotion. It took us a little by surprise. We won't let that happen again."
And to make sure the fans hear this message – and to hear feedback – Sam and John have made themselves available to supporters.
Over the summer they went on tour, visiting 13 pubs and answering fans' questions.
John said: "What we are about is not taking these fans – who are vital to the club in every way – for granted."
