Billy Davies believes that the difference between Derby County and Chelsea is a simple financial equation and has thrown down the gauntlet to a chairman he has not met for three weeks to come up with a £30 million transfer fund for January or accept relegation.

Adam Pearson has been on his own international duty, seeking “significant investment” in the club he took over at the end of last month, but he will realise that a manager he has backed to win another promotion if Derby go down - despite reports last night that Davies was about to be sacked in the next 24 hours - wants a better chance of staying up this time round.

“I have met him and spoken once or twice on the phone,” Davies said. “In an ideal world it would be nice to go to a board meeting. He’s already said if we go down I’m the right manager to bring us straight back up and he’s right. But we still need to invest in the playing staff immediately.

“The team we’ve got at the moment is not good enough for the Premier League and that’s no disrespect to this group of players who are giving me their all. But we need the lift and the encouragement that the arrival of six new quality players would give us. Look at Manchester City - and they were adding to a Premier League squad. We’re building on a Coca-Cola Championship squad.”

Davies added that in his opinion the club needed to spend a minimum of £40 million to compete over the two transfer windows. They have spent just over £10 million. “If you want to be in the Premier League then you’ve got to pay the wages, the contracts, the transfer fees,” he said. “If you want to play in the Premier League then you’d better believe there is going to be competition for players who are top quality. Look at [Nicolas] Anelka. Anelka is saving Bolton on his own, but you don’t get him for £10,000 a week.

“This is the Premier League, it’s the greatest league in the world. What we need to do is accept this as a Championship squad and build on that. That’s why we need to invest more than anybody else.”

In the context of a team who have not scored for 611 minutes of Premier League action, this was a good day for Derby as they kept Chelsea in first gear in the first half and, despite going behind after a slick move in which Jon Obi Mikel and Frank Lampard prompted Steve Sidwell to send Salomon Kalou in on goal, gave them a rigorous test in the second period.

John Terry, on his return from injury, played Kenny Miller onside before the Scotland forward lobbed home perfectly, but Andre Marriner, the referee, disallowed the goal and then exacerbated his misjudgment by allowing Andriy Shevchenko to slide right through Giles Barnes during the build-up to Shaun Wright-Phillips’s goal, after Lampard had struck a post.

Michael Essien will be suspended for three matches after he placed a hand in Miller’s face in the last minute and no one could argue that he did not deserve a red card.

But as Chelsea go into their Champions League match away to Rosenborg on Wednesday night with nine wins from Avram Grant’s 13 games in charge, Derby face Sunderland and Middlesbrough in their next three fixtures, sensing that if a realistic points tally can be gleaned before Christmas, Pearson and Davies could yet be having a meaningful conversation before the transfer window opens.