'Boss' tackles the game living beyond its means

John Gregory Interview: He cried when he left Aston Villa. But the new Derby manager tells Nick Townsend that life in the First Division will be more like a rebirth

For the first time in four years, it has been a long, hot, lazy and, most crucially, uninterrupted summer for John Gregory and his extended family. The heavily tanned features, the hue of a medium to well-done steak, which lend him the appearance of a slightly ageing Ibiza holiday rep suggest that fact. The sardonic humour which infects that familiar Gregory drawl confirms it.

"A month down in Cannes, and I just chilled," enthuses the Derby County manager of six months and 14 games. "We took my daughters, their boyfriends, everyone, including my grandson Max, because I'm a grandfather now, you know. I couldn't have done it before, of course, what with all the phone calls every five minutes. [He does an impression of someone who may or may not be the chairman of Aston Villa, his previous employer.] 'Quick, quick, the club's in turmoil, Merson has put in a transfer request, the club's in turmoil, we need you to come back'." He shakes his head in exasperation. "Honestly..."

Summer breaks at Derby County are decidedly more relaxed affairs than those at Villa Park. First, because of the nature of the club and their chairman, Lionel Pickering, according to Gregory a dedicated non-interventionist. Secondly, because of the state of the club's finances: debts of somewhere between £25-£27 million, and growing, and a moratorium on any further spending on players' wages, the reason why Gregory has the Middlesbrough player Robbie Mustoe, who is available free on a "Bosman", training with his squad, but is unable to offer him a contract.

"I knew I couldn't buy any players, so I had the phone switched off all summer. Nobody was going to ring me. Lionel doesn't bother me, he doesn't pester [Gregory puts deliberate emphasis on that particular word] me, he just lets me get on with it.

The exchange of employers, from "Deadly" Doug to "Laissez Faire" Lionel is all very well, you agree, but in terms of his status, surely Derby v Reading (the Rams' first League game on Saturday) scarcely compares with, say, Villa versus Manchester United? "When the Premiership fixtures came out there was a touch of envy at looking at it and not seeing my own team there," Gregory concedes. "I looked at my previous club, and who they've got in the opening game and where they are at Christmas and what their run-in's like. But I'm very much a realist. I'm here and I'm excited about this place. I always feel this club have got a chance. They're a big club and very well supported."

He adds: "Years ago, I could never understand why [Brian] Clough stayed at Forest so long, when he could have had bigger fish to fry, but now I can. He was enjoying it. He was happy. And I get that same feeling here. It's not Villa."

When you tell him he has the demeanour of a liberated man, Gregory readily agrees: "Yeah, I've got total freedom." There is a pause before he adds pointedly: "Maybe previous managers [Colin Todd and Jim Smith] had too much freedom here because we're in a bit of schtuck financially. But this club are amazing because everybody that works here gives the manager total support."

If Gregory speaks with the enthusiasm of a man who is besotted with his new love, he evidently still retains a deep affection for the partner he divorced. He may have walked out on Villa in late January, but recalls the day precisely on which he realised that his eventual departure was inevitable. It was Monday 29 October last year, two days after Villa's 3-2 defeat of Bolton had hoisted his team to the summit of the Premiership.

"I always wanted Villa to be a Champions' League side, to have a go for the title," he recalls. "On that Monday there was a board meeting, and I was told that we weren't going to improve the squad. I felt that on that day we should have gone out and bought a player, even two players. It was a great day to kick on and really let people know that we'd not only gone top but that we were going to stay there. The squad needed improving, without any doubt."

Gregory adds: "After that, we slipped down a couple of places, and the chance was gone. From that day, I got somewhat depressed. I just knew that it wasn't going to get any better. The club just didn't have the same ambition as I did. That really was the day when I really felt I couldn't go on for much longer."

He speaks with pride of his signings of players, including Olaf Mellberg, Juan Pablo Angel (the Argentinian who vindicated Gregory's faith in him with 14 goals) and Alpay. "And to get someone like [Peter] Schmeichel to come to our club spoke volumes about what he felt we could achieve. I knew we weren't going to get any better than we were. In the end, I really couldn't take another minute of it."

So, it was an acrimonious farewell with Ellis? "Not at all. I put my arms round him, gave him a big kiss, and then cried my eyes out. Honestly. I loved being manager of Aston Villa. But I just felt that I was banging my head against a brick wall. It was time to move on while things were still pretty cool. I am a lot more relaxed in this job. There was always a frosty relationship at Villa and I knew the longer it went on the more it would aggravate me."

Had he spoken to Ellis since that day? "No, never. But I won't have anything said against the club itself."

By chance, on Friday, the day we met at Pride Park, Gregory had driven past Villa Park on his way to training at Derby. "You look up at that stadium, and it's huge," he says. "You just stand there and it dwarfs you. But then I just say to myself, 'Yes, but you're so happy where you are'. It was almost like I was never there, really."

The irony is, of course, that having left the club that he claims wouldn't support his aspirations, he has joined one who are quite incapable of doing so, at least for the foreseeable future.

Derby have already sold 30,000 seats for the Reading game. Over 15,000 of those are season tickets, costing £240-£410 for adults. Multiply that up, add the season's other ticket sales to the shirt and sponsorship income and the "parachute payment" made to relegated teams (half the Premiership TV income, which works out at roughly £7m) and compare that income to the annual salary bill of £17.3m, and you can begin to estimate the depth of Derby's problems.

The newly negotiated Sky TV contract which will provide Nationwide First Division clubs with around half a million pounds (compared with the £2.7m agreed in the aborted ITV Digital deal) will hardly make a dent in that burgeoning debt.

In many ways, it is a parable for the current state of the Nationwide League. "I genuinely didn't realise how deep the financial troubles were here and the size of the overdraft and the almost impossibility of clearing that debt quickly," says Gregory. "I had put in the budget this year that I wanted to bring in four players, but clearly I can't do that. I can't add a single player to the wage bill."

He adds: "We're basically being governed by the banks. The business plan we put to them was that we were going to move on some of the players and reduce the total annual salaries of £17.3m, get it down as low as we possibly can. That doesn't mean we can't buy an extra box of washing powder. It's not that bad. But we can't suddenly go out and sign somebody on half a million a year.

"There's going to come a time when they're going to say, 'Right, enough's enough', which is almost there now. The situation is that we've got seven or eight players who won't get a game, but we can't get rid of them [because other clubs in the present climate can't afford to pay their wages]. We can't even pay them off."

The problems don't end there. One player, Daryl Powell, at the end of his contract, has been offered a new one at half his old salary. The midfielder has apparently rejected the offer. In addition, the club have not even been able to sell the players it would prefer to keep. Goalkeeper Mart Poom might have moved to Everton, but they only offered half Derby's £7m valuation.

The sale of Malcolm Christie, joint top-scorer last season, might have reduced the club's overdraft considerably, but only Middlesbrough have displayed any interest. "If you've got £7m with you, you can take him now," Gregory quips. "I don't want to lose him, but it does surprise me that nobody's taken a gamble with him."

Despite these impediments to progress, Gregory believes that, if the financial issue is set aside, relegation is "probably the best thing that could have happened to us." He adds: "I consider it to be like a rebirth. We were living on the borderline. Jimmy [Jim Smith] did a great job here with what he achieved for the club, but over the last two or three seasons we flirted with relegation. It was almost inevitable, I suppose, that it was going to finally happen to us."

He adds: "The truth is that we've lived beyond our means, that's very evident. Now we've got a Premiership wage bill, but we're in the Nationwide. I know we're going to lose a lot of money this year. But at least if we get back to the Premiership, we've got a chance of clawing it back when we get around £15m from television."

Such success will depend upon authorative performances from the triumvirate of Fabrizio Ravanelli, Rob Lee and Warren Barton, the latter pair being players whom Gregory dragged under the transfer portcullis least season before it descended.

"They're going to be big players for us," insists Gregory. "Warren's my club captain, Rob's my club moaner. But he's like [Steve] Staunton; when he's moaning, you know he's happy really, he's a bit of an Albert Tatlock. But the two of them lead by example. Fab's exactly the same."

He adds: "They could all be Jack the lads in this division. But they're not. I look upon those three senior professionals as role models. Fab's one of the fittest 33-year-olds you'll ever find and I'm expecting a lot from him. Being a division lower he'll find it a bit easier. He'll score a lot of goals for us this season."

He will need to if Derby are to satisfy their manager's desire for immediate promotion. Nothing close will suffice. "I've already regarded relegation here as failure," Gregory maintains. "That had my name on it last season, even though I was only here for 14 games. I don't believe in running away from the truth. Maybe it wasn't totally my responsibility last season, but this time it will be completely down to me."

Or to put it another way, it is time for the man who is obsessed with the ultimate "Boss", Bruce Springsteen, to demonstrate that he is Tougher Than The Rest.

Biography: John Gregory

Born: 11 May 1954 in Scunthorpe.

Position: Midfield.

Turned professional: May 1972.

Played for: Northampton Town (1972-77: 187 League games, 8 goals); Aston Villa (1977-79: 65, 10); Brighton & Hove Albion (1979-81: 72, 7); QPR (1981-85: 161, 36); Derby County (1985-88: 103, 22); Plymouth Argyle (1990: 3, 0); Bolton Wanderers (1990: 7, 0).

Honours: FA Cup runner-up 1982; Second Division championship 1983, 1987. International: England (6 caps, 0 goals).

Management career: Portsmouth (1989-90); Wycombe Wanderers (1996-1998); Aston Villa (1998-2002); Derby County (2002-present). Honours: FA Cup runners-up 2000.