Derby County have secured their Championship status for another year… as long as no Financial Fair Play sanctions arrive in the coming weeks.
Saturday’s 3-3 draw with Sheffield Wednesday secured survival for the Rams, and Wayne Rooney will now look to plan for next season.
The Rams need to find more goals. With just 36 in 46 Championship games, Derby are lacking firepower; 34-year-old Colin Kazim-Richards was the only player to score more than six league goals this term.
Phillip Cocu seemingly saw this coming, targeting Darmstadt striker Serdar Dursun as his top target following Chris Martin’s departure.
The Athletic report that Derby didn’t think they needed to jump in for Dursun, and could wait until January to sign him on the cheap inside the final months of his contract.
Cocu didn’t make it until January though, and the Rams seemingly ditched any plans to sign Dursun as a result, missing out on a potential bargain.
The 29-year-old has smashed 21 goals in 31 2.Bundesliga games this season, hitting more than twice the number of goals Derby’s top scorer bagged.
Signing Dursun could have sent Derby’s season on a different path, but the Rams tried to go down a cheaper route in attack – something that rarely works out well.
Derby now look to have missed out on Dursun for good as Schalke and Hamburg are both pushing to sign him. If another goalscorer is on the radar, Derby must learn the lessons of this season and go out to to land him.