Paul Clement interview: Derby County boss loving the buzz of being in driving seat at last

Being assistant coach at Chelsea, PSG and Real has prepared the Londoner for his first managerial role at Derby, he tells Simon Hart. And, the odd sleepless night apart, he is enjoying a club cut out for success.

Paul Clement at Derby County’s training ground yesterday, where he has installed a whole new analytics department (Andrew Fox)

He has been assistant manager at three of the world’s most famous clubs. He has coached Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the greatest footballers of all time. But for Paul Clement, his first few weeks as a manager with Derby County were what gave him restless nights.

“At the start I did have an adjustment period with the sleep,” he admits, recalling the constant buzz of ideas in his mind. “I suppose it’s just the quality of sleep, the thought processes – you wake up thinking, ‘Oh no, I’ve been thinking about that’.”

This was a consequence of the never-ending demands on a manager, Clement explains as he reflects on his step-up from No 2. “The biggest difference is the decision-making – the decision-making is so much more frequent and the times I have to make decisions and the importance of the decisions. Obviously the biggest one is choosing the team, the players, the tactics, and then managing the game, the input at half-time, the way you feed back to players. Even today it is decision after decision, whether dealing with the media, in a team meeting with the players, dealing with my staff, planning training, executing training. It is constant, every moment from morning until evening.”

It is within this context that Clement, sitting down in a classroom at Derby’s Moor Farm training ground this week, explains he has only 20 minutes for our interview and photographs. The Londoner is a man with no time to waste, a man who from serving in Wimbledon’s Football in the Community Scheme while working as a PE teacher in the mid-90s has embarked on a remarkable climb up the coaching ladder in the past decade, a rise accelerated when Guus Hiddink took him into the first-team group at Chelsea and he subsequently embarked on a special working relationship with Carlo Ancelotti.

He followed Ancelotti to Paris Saint-Germain and then Real Madrid, where he experienced a level of pressure that provided some preparation for his current role. “It is a bit like this job, it makes you feel alive every day,” says Clement, becoming more animated. “It makes you feel alert and that you’re really living. It is different when you are a No 1 but I suppose it was good preparation coming from such a massive club where there is such intensity and such a spotlight.”

Such was Clement’s reputation that he had “dialogue” with some Premier League clubs before deciding his next move, yet Derby was the “stand-out opportunity” as “the one where I thought I’m going to have a really good chance of being successful”. With Derby sitting fourth in the Championship, and with the chance to leapfrog leaders Hull City when the teams meet tonight, it seems he has chosen well.

Clement lists what drew him to the club. “The tradition of the club, a fantastic fanbase – 30,000 every game – and good infrastructure in terms of stadium and facilities. A good, solid squad of players that have challenged the last two years. A new owner coming in who is passionate and enthusiastic and willing to invest and improve things both in the playing squad and support structures.”

That new owner, Mel Morris, has a reported £400m fortune and a wish to see his home-town side back in the Premier League. “It is a good alignment,” says Clement who was not just permitted a £20m net spend on players but has also been able to build an analytics department including four full-time analysts, two of them from Madrid.

“When I came, there was one person doing opposition analysis so we built a department from nothing to a bigger department than we had at Madrid. We have seven people now working at being at the cutting edge in analysis: video, statistics, the way we feed back to players. We are looking to build that even further to have a whole club analysis department where the academy and first team are together and all the departments that need support can find it.”

Clement’s rapid climb: PE teacher to PSG

1995-2000: PE teacher at Glenthorne High School; also involved in community schemes at Wimbledon and Chelsea

2000: Fulham academy coach

2000-03: Republic of Ireland Under-21 coach

2006-09: Chelsea youth and reserve teams

2009-11: Chelsea assistant manager

2011-12: Blackburn Rovers assistant manager

2012-13: PSG assistant coach

2013-15: Real Madrid assistant coach

The on-field evidence is equally encouraging with regulars at the iPro Stadium noting that while Clement has retained predecessor Steve McClaren’s 4-3-3 set-up, this is a side better organised out of possession and with better control of games. “We try to be creative, attacking, but the foundation is being strong defensively. The statistics say we are a team who have a lot of the ball, we do create chances, we are pretty robust defensively – only Hull have a better defence.” From winning none of their opening six matches, Clement’s team are on a run of nine victories from 12. “We are in a tough run of games now and have to show against the teams at the top that we can do a good job,” he adds.

A good job is precisely what the 43-year-old did alongside Ancelotti, both when winning Ligue 1 with PSG and, notably, when guiding Madrid to La Decima, their long-sought 10th European Cup. Clement hopes Ancelotti will visit him soon at his new home in the Derbyshire countryside but in the meantime he can draw on rich lessons learned under the Italian. The key to Ancelotti’s success, he says, is “the importance of respect between people because ultimately that is what we are, we are human beings and we want to be treated well. So, manager to player, player to player, player to staff, we try and create an environment where it is based on respect. And also the importance of striving to be better all the time but at the same time being patient and understanding it can’t be done in a day or a week.”

Ironically, patience is the one thing you do not find at their old club, as Rafa Benitez is experiencing now. “I am not surprised about it, that is not to say I think it is right,” he says of the calls for Benitez’s head that followed Real’s 4-0 loss to Barcelona last week. “All managers need time to be able to do their work. It is good that the club has come out and supported him. Even in difficult times that is what you need.”

He gives a typically measured response when asked about his own dismissal alongside Ancelotti in May. “We hadn’t achieved what the club wanted and we knew the expectations were very high. It was a place where you had to deliver silverware. We did that in the first year and early in the second year with the World Club Championship and the European Super Cup – that’s the level you need to be operating at and we weren’t able to deliver that in the second year, although we came close. We were runners-up in the league and Champions League semi-finalists but that is not enough.”

It is also interesting to hear from him what separates a truly great player like Ronaldo from the rest. “Just that unbelievable desire to win in everything, from training to the actual games – just relentless,” he says, though he is unconvinced by the rumours of a possible Old Trafford return for the Portuguese. “I think he will finish there [in Spain]. It would be nice to see him here but I am not sure.”

Today, he is leading a less heralded group of players at Derby which meant “there had to be a recalibration of my work” yet the same principles apply. “It is a level down but I have really good footballers and they want to get better and for that reason it is not dissimilar to working with some of the best in the world.”

Such is the range of Clement’s coaching experience – from grassroots to elite – it is no surprise to see his methods reaping rewards already.