After all the euphoria, the reality of the second tier...
AFTER all the euphoria and the champagne corks popping by his ears, it did not take Paul Warne long to address what is required for life back in the Championship after promotion was secure.
In a division he felt is the best it has ever been, Derby County’s head coach said his team will need to be more athletic and offer more of a goal threat if they are to deal with the challenges of next season.
The Championship will be particularly competitive as it is now a league within a league.
The relegated sides from the Premier League tend to bounce back immediately, helped by their parachute payments, although Ipswich Town under Kieran McKenna have done remarkably well to break that trend.
There is also the gang of clubs hoping to make it to the play-offs, while the League One sides who are promoted tend to find themselves fighting to survive, as Sheffield Wednesday and Plymouth Argyle just managed to do at the weekend.
Derby will aim to consolidate next season and the good news is that, financially, they will generate around another £7m to £8m a year from the new EFL television deal.
Eighty per cent of the total goes to the clubs in the Championship, 12% goes to League One and the remainder to the fourth tier.
The away ends next season should more or less be sold out given the size of the clubs on the itinerary, particularly with Sheffield United coming down from the Premier League and the likes of Stoke City just around the corner.
That will also generate further revenue for Derby, whose gates will no doubt hover around 30,000 or above.
That all sounds good from a financial standpoint but as football finance expert Kieran Maguire pointed out on Radio Derby last week, it is an expensive division to be in.
The average wage bill for last
season in the Championship was £31m – Derby’s was £17m all in for League One.
Money is not the be-all and end-all, but it underlines the stark reality of how competitive the Championship is.
It is probably the hardest division there is from which to win promotion.
Maguire said that you have to be prepared to spend but there is no way and no desire by Derby to hark back to the days when they were forking out £10m on a Krystian Bielik.
That is why their recruitment needs to be on point this summer.
There will naturally be a few free agents and crucially Derby will no longer be manacled to the conditions agreed with the EFL post-administration.
But it is trying to find players who a) give Warne the athleticism he has always craved, b) can handle the challenges of the Championship and c) offer value for money.
That is not going to be easy, but it isn’t impossible.
The club will need patience to acclimatise back to the division which they once hoped would pave the way for their return to the Premier League.
There is a lot of work ahead, but there is no reason to fear the challenge in what promises to be a fascinating but exciting summer of preparation.