Burnley
Blackburn Rovers
Coventry City
Derby County
Leeds United
Luton Town
Middlesbrough
Millwall
Norwich City
Portsmouth
Sheffield Wednesday
Sheffield United
QPR
Derby County are eyeing summer additions to bolster their depleted ranks ahead of the 2025/26 Championship season.
Nathaniel Mendez-Laing has joined MK Dons, Sonny Bradley has joined Lincoln City, and Derby County have released a further seven first-team players on top of that.
Kemar Roofe, Tyrese Fornah, Jeff Hendrick, Erik Pieters, Tom Barkhuizen, Conor Washington, and Rohan Luthra are among those, while Nat Phillips, Marcus Harness, and Harrison Armstrong’s loans have expired.
Derby’s financial situation is becoming clearer. But what is certainly apparent is the need for signings to ensure John Eustace can easily improve upon last season’s 19th-place finish.
Derby County eye a trio of new signings, including Luton Town’s Carlton Morris
Eiran Cashin could be a Derby target, while other former Eustace favourites like Lewis Travis have been linked to Derby.
Things are unclear regarding Jerry Yates’ permanent Derby future, meaning added firepower and depth in attack is paramount.
The Rams are set to sign three players to bolster both ends of the pitch. Veteran centre-back Danny Batth is arriving on a free transfer from Blackburn Rovers as is Andi Weimann.
The most crucial piece of transfer news revealed by John Percy of The Telegraph is that of Luton Town striker Carlton Morris.
Derby are lining up numerous deals currently and have agreed a fee with Luton for Morris, but he is not set for a medical until next week as he is currently on post-season holiday.
Youth signings like Kamil Conteh are needed for Derby as well, but the most important factor is to improve the floor of the squad first as much as possible.
Signings such as Weimann, Batth, and Morris may not have much resale or long-term value, but they improve the floor of the team a vast amount, with Morris a 29-year-old in his prime as well.
Ironically, Eustace’s Derby lost to Luton but still stayed up at the expense of the Hatters. Now, they will secure their star striker if he passes his medical at Pride Park.
- READ MORE: Derby County’s five most expensive sales, including FA Cup and Championship Golden Boot winners
Derby target Carlton Morris’ impressive goalscoring statistics
Looking purely at the surface level stats, Morris appears to be a regular EFL striker with a mix of some prolific and some profligate seasons. He has scored 42 and assisted 14 in 145 Championship games.
However, dig a little deeper, for example, and you see that Morris has scored 53 goals from an xG of 47.1 over the last five seasons — per FBref.
That includes a minor underperformance of 0.4 last year but a career overperformance for the most part. His clinical nature was also apparent in the Premier League with 11 goals.
Not only is that promising but Morris could be described as unlucky or on the wrong side of variance last season. Per FotMob, he was in the top 15.3% of Championship players for post-shot xG.
That is mightily impressive and gave him an improvement on his regular xG of 1.33. It suggests his shots are — on average — better and more accurate than your average Championship striker.
His leadership and experience will also be fantastic for Derby to add, given he regularly captained Luton in recent years in Tom Lockyer’s absence.