Derby's £20m gamble topped the big-spending Championship

Life Beyond the Premier League: The Rams had a bigger net spend this summer than both Arsenal and Tottenham

Q: Which Championship club had a bigger net spend this summer than both Arsenal and Tottenham?

The answer is ambitious Derby County. The East Midlands club are yet to win under their new manager, Paul Clement, but they have certainly underlined their intent with their business off the field.

Derby broke their transfer record for the second time this summer on deadline day this week when signing midfielder Bradley Johnson from Norwich City in a £6m deal. With Jacob Butterfield arriving from Huddersfield Town on the same day for £4m, their total summer expenditure reached the £20m mark. Other notable buys include Tom Ince, signed for £4.75m from Hull City, and Jason Shackell, a £3m recruit from Burnley, and the goal of chairman Mel Morris is clear.

“A sustainable place in the Premier League,” said Morris, outlining his plans as he was confirmed as the club’s new owner. The Derby-born businessman is an investor in Digital Entertainment, the software company which produced the Candy Crush Saga video game, and his estimated £400m fortune will allow Rams fans to dream of a return to the Premier League. Yet Morris is not the only club owner thinking big in the Championship this year.

The pot of gold that promotion would bring – even immediate relegation as the bottom-placed club in 2016 would yield an estimated £99m – has led some clubs to invest heavily.

Middlesbrough, last season’s beaten play-off finalists, had an estimated net spend of £12m in bringing Stewart Downing home from West Ham and also recruiting David Nugent and the South Americans Cristian Stuani and Carlos de Pena.

Sheffield Wednesday’s Thai owner, Dejphon Chansiri, meanwhile, spent around £9m on a crop of 15 new players in an effort to end the South Yorkshire club’s 15-year top-flight exile. Wednesday’s intake includes the £3.5m Fernando Forestieri from Watford and £2.2m Portuguese attacking midfielder Marco Matias.

Other sides have flexed their muscles. Burnley paid the biggest transfer fee of any Championship club in signing forward Andre Gray from Brentford for a club record £9m, while even Bristol City, a League One club last term, made failed bids for Gray and Crystal Palace’s Dwight Gayle.

In the words of one player agent, the Premier League’s new £5.14bn TV deal starting next season is the driving force. “What they are all striving for is to get into the Premier League with the money on offer, which is incredible,” he said. “It is so competitive now.” One side-effect is a rise in wages in the Championship. “I was involved in a deal a few years ago from one Championship club to another one and it was four and a half grand a week. Now it would probably be three times that.”

One club taking a more cautious approach are Preston, League One play-off final winners in May, whose only cash signing was forward Stevie May, signed from Wednesday on deadline day. “There are some very significant salaries around but we wouldn’t pay them,” said John Kay, their chief executive. According to Kay, Preston, as a Championship club, will receive £4.5m from Sky this year along with £100,000 for every live game – a drop in the ocean compared to the Premier League’s riches, which is why clubs like Derby are chasing the dream.

“When it came to deadline day we paid an amount of money [just under £1m] for a striker but prior to that we hadn’t paid a fee,” added Kay. “That feels like it is in complete contrast to some other clubs within the division who are clearly gambling more money on the ultimate prize.”