'Derby County signing has quickly proved good value and I know more clubs will follow transfer trend'

Former Derby County manager Gary Rowett.
-Credit: (Image: Getty)


Derby County have had a brilliant start to the season and, along with Oxford, that's exactly what you desperately hope for as a club coming out of the division below.

You hope to have that winning mentality which Paul Warne has worked hard to develop, and you hope that translates into the Championship. What they have continued is, when they had a defeat, they had that ability to bounce back. You have to credit the manager, his staff and the players' mentality.

Pride Park is a fortress that you want to try to utilise and I think three home games out of the five has given them an opportunity to seek a bit of an advantage there. Oxford have done the same.

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Home form, particularly in the first season in the division, is absolutely crucial because what you tend to find when you are at home is you just play with a bit more energy. You play on the front foot a little bit more and the crowd allows you to. When you go away from home, sometimes it feels like you're waiting for a game and waiting for the opposition to strike first before you sort of step into action.

And that's not something you necessarily want to do. But both Derby and Oxford have made brilliant starts. And by having points on the board early on it can be gold dust for later in the season when injuries start to bite.

I saw Kenzo Goudmijn's goal at the weekend and both of his goals for Derby have been very composed finishes. That's what you notice. And of course, that's what you're getting from a Dutch player because maybe they have other characteristics that will fit the Championship in terms of giving you a little bit more technical quality that maybe you can't buy in England.

I found that with Zian Fleming and Andreas Voglsammer at Millwall. Those two came in the same window and they massively helped the culture. They would stay out every day practising for an hour. And what starts to happen is that two or three more players go and join them.

The culture in Europe, in certain countries with certain players is very, very high. You might bring the players in on a Sunday for a cool down and the British-based players sometimes will be whinging like mad because they're not used to it. But the foreign players just come in and sometimes they'll come in on their own anyway. They'll come in on their day off to do a recovery session because that's their mentality and that's how they have been brought up within the game.

And you look at that and there are good transfers to be had in the European market which Derby have proven. I remember signing Maikel Kieftenbeld at Birmingham. He had been captain at Groningen, he was 24 years old in a top division.

I think we paid about £230,000. His wages were realistic and a lot lower than a British player at that point in the squad. That's the type of player you can get. You're looking at the European market or the global market, and you're thinking what are some of the characteristics that player has that I think fit the Championship. The Championship has changed so that makes it a little bit easier. It's less physical and more technical than it has been but you're playing 46 games and it's a very competitive league from top to bottom.

Away from Derby, I was surprised with Steven Schumacher's departure at Stoke City this week, but then nothing truly surprises you in football anymore. Ryan Lowe left Preston after one game. There was also another change after a couple of matches in League One when Neil Critchley left Blackpool.

It seems that there have been people leaving jobs a lot earlier than you'd expect. The second international break is when you expect clubs to maybe start looking at their early season form and seeing where they are.

So Steven leaving Stoke did surprise me somewhat and the reason it surprised me is because they ended last season fairly well. They won the last three games and they've come into this season and won two out of five in the Championship and had a brilliant result against Middlesbrough away in the League Cup.

You look at those results and they're not the worst in the world. I accept they're not earth-shattering. Stoke are not near the top of the league, but I don't believe that, over the last three or four seasons, Stoke would necessarily expect to be up there in the top six right away. Obviously, I don't know what's happened but there's been a clear change of structure at Stoke with with Jon Walters coming in towards the end of last season.

He was quite open in communicating with the fans, trying to galvanise the club and the fans and I thought he did a really good job doing that. It was quite unusual to hear a sporting director be so open in public. We are used to that in different countries around Europe, but not necessarily in the UK.

The only thing I can presume from the outside is maybe the club wanted to go in a different direction because it didn't feel like a results-based decision. Most managers are in a simple position that if you haven't got results you expect to be under pressure and you expect at some point to lose your job.

I went into Stoke knowing that unless I was in the top two, it would be seen as a failure and you accept that. But you take the job based on the expectations and, at that point, the club was clear in their expectation, which was to get straight back up to the Premier League. We spent a lot of money in that first window to try to get back into the Premier League. But you have to deal with those unhappy Premier League players and some of those players coming towards the end of their careers.

I went into that club as a manager feeling that I had a chance to build something long term, even if in the short term it wasn't perfect. I think it's gone away from that a little bit, like a lot of football clubs have. Sometimes you can argue for more time, but ultimately, the results we had weren't befitting of a team that that needed to bounce back straight away. You accept and understand it. Most managers will hold their hands up and say I needed to have done better.

In Steven's case, it was similar to me at Birmingham in that if you lose your job and it's not because of results, it always feels a little harsher. There is a little bit of a stigma and it feels like you've failed when, actually, in certain situations, you could have done a reasonable job. But when the club decides to go down a different route that's a very different feeling. That's the one that always makes you feel a little bit uneasy and a little disappointed with.

Steven's already said he was quite surprised about the decision but every owner who puts millions and millions of pounds into their football club has a decision to shape the club however they want. But, in a lot of these cases, you don't know the background or the ins and outs as to why they've made that decision. They could be sat there wanting to build a future with that manager and something may have then happened to make them change their mind.

There might have been a disagreement, a big argument, I'm not suggesting that is what happened in Stoke's case, I'm just saying generically that sometimes there might be a reason. There can be so many factors around it. We don't know what's gone on in that specific case at Stoke, but I agree the timing, particularly to people in the outside world, always looks strange when you've had a transfer window and you've had a chance to build.

I would imagine a lot of fans would be like you might as well have done it in the summer and give the new person a chance to build the team in their own way. But that's never always possible and, without understanding the intricacies, it's quite difficult. I also think clubs operate in a very different way now. Most clubs, when it comes to transfer windows, managers won't truly have a 100 per cent angle on them.

Position-wise they can say what they want, there are players they know and there are players they understand. But clubs tend to give those options to a manager who will pick which one's the right fit. So negotiations can be shaped in such a way that if a club want to sign who they want to sign, then, nine times out of 10, that's what they can do depending on their process. There was a big turnover of players at Stoke the summer before last and I suppose they will be desperate to get back to that consistent process and that consistent feeling of a team off and on the pitch that they've had for so many years.

Check out Gary Rowett’s Breaking Lines football podcast series on. https://www.youtube.com/@BreakingLinesPodcast ( https://www.youtube.com/@BreakingLinesPodcast ) . Follow Gary on Insta @garyrowett1

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