DERBY County's Pride Park Stadium will be the venue next week when clubs will fine tune the details of a new financial fair play framework that would change the financial landscape in the Championship.

As part of an annual general meeting of the 72 League clubs, representatives of the Championship teams will further discuss a plan aimed at tackling escalating debts and changing spending behaviour in the division.

Clubs in League Two have worked under a similar system for a few years now and League One clubs are to adopt the League Two model.

The Championship teams have been working on their own financial fair play system. They are putting together a new set of spending rules that, if approved, will take effect from the start of next season, 2012-13.

"In a nutshell, it is about football clubs living within their means," said the Rams' chief executive, Tom Glick, who says Derby are shaping up well for the introduction of FFP.

"It is about the financial health of football clubs, a strategy for keeping clubs afloat, financially viable and in business.

"Financial fair play will lead clubs to change their behaviour. It will place a premium on making good decisions rather than having the biggest wallet and that is not a bad thing.

"We are in a strong position for where the rules will end up.

"We have done a lot of the heavy lifting over the last three years, particularly since Nigel Clough's arrival, so I would be excited about and optimistic of our ability to be successful in that new landscape."

Glick believes FFP will put a rein on clubs who look to spend beyond their means and lead to healthier clubs while preserving competition in the Championship.

"There might be a bit more competitive balance in the division because the over-riding premise is that clubs are going to need to balance the books," said Glick.

"That is going to reel in those who for a period of time, one, two or three years, are willing to roll the dice and throw a lot of short-term working capital to chase a promotion that can sometimes distort the division or at least wages within the division."

Once installed, FFP will cover an initial five-year period until the end of season 2016-17, during which clubs will learn to live within the new framework.

"When we are sitting here five years from now, it will be a radically different set of economics in football," said Glick.

"We want to preserve the great competition we have in the Championship. We don't want to change that, and we won't, but there are clubs losing money and some are risking going out of business every year.

"So, we want to preserve the competition but have healthier clubs.

"In order to get there, you have to do pretty much what the League One and League Two clubs have been doing. You have to have a disciplined spend on player wages and player transfer fees. So what you are spending each year can be only a certain percentage of turnover.

"The model in the Championship is based on having the club balance their books, with acceptable deviation.

"What that means is that you are allowed to lose so much money but once you choose to lose more than that – and often it is a case of choosing to lose more than that – there will be a punishment.

"So we are looking to change spending behaviour."

The amount of deviation is being discussed. To give clubs time to adapt as each year of the five-year period is ticked off, the deviation is likely to start wider before it narrows.

But what if clubs break the rules on deviation?

Punishments for doing so are also being discussed.

"What is most likely to be the starting consequence would be that a club is handed a trading embargo, which essentially would mean it could not bring any players in," said Glick.

"We may also explore some things for clubs who flaunt the rules and succeed in getting promoted, perhaps penalties for clubs who try to do that.

"There are things like competition taxes or luxury taxes that have been discussed and might come in down the line, which, essentially, would give you the choice to spend outside your limit but it would cost you.

"These sanctions are not likely to be part of the initial FFP scheme."

Finances at clubs are tight, and Derby are no exception. This has been seen in their transfer policy and the way the squad has been reshaped.

John Brayford, James, Bailey, Frank Fielding, Jamie Ward, Theo Robinson, Craig Bryson and Chris Maguire have all been signed in recent transfer windows and all are 25 or under.

It is very different from the business completed in the first window of the reign of previous manager Paul Jewell.

Roy Carroll, Robbie Savage, Alan Stubbs, Laurent Robert, Mile Sterjovski and Emmanuel Villa were among those who arrived in January 2008, the month GSE took over the club.

Glick said: "As we have learned our lessons as to how we can be more successful, we've put an emphasis on buying young talent that can perform now, will perform better in the future, and will appreciate in value.

"We have focused on youth development and the Academy consistently, and we are starting to see some of the results.

"That is an important strategy because you are bringing in players who are going to have to perform for Derby at Championship level or higher but who we haven't gone out and paid a fee for, although we invest a lot to run the Academy.

"Those players will start on lower wages and so it helps you manage your overall squad composition and maybe spend more on quality in other places.

"So we have already been working to get ourselves in that position.

"Getting promoted is a big challenge but it might be that we are that much better prepared and more likely to be successful in the FFP framework."

Glick believes manager Nigel Clough has done a "fantastic" job in reshaping the squad.

"Nigel's focus is on more than just this week, this month, this season," said Glick.

Under FFP, the more revenue a club can attract, the more it can spend.

"We always have to provide value for money and we are sensitive to what is going on in the economy and people's household incomes which is one of the reasons we have not had a price increase on renewing season tickets for five years," said Glick.

"We are focused on driving more attendance, corporate hospitality, sponsorship, merchandising and maybe some new "oil wells" that can help generate more revenue for the club because our ability to generate more revenue means we can self-sustain ourselves at an even higher level.

"So it boils down to focusing on recruitment, development, performance in football, and driving revenue and retaining that revenue with great service.

"If we can do those two things well, we can be a force to be reckoned with.

"And we think we have made a good start in both areas."

Depending on what the deviations are at the start, not too many clubs in the Championship would be hit hard if FFP came in tomorrow, according to Glick.

"However, by the second year and third year, there's a whole bunch that would need to change their behaviour to fall in line," added Glick.

"It is good because it gives everybody fair warning.

"It means any new contracts the clubs are signing they have to be mindful of what their wage bill is going to need to look like in the 2014-15 season, three years into the new plan."

Leicester City spent big last summer in their bid to win promotion and splashed out again in the January window when they signed Wes Morgan from Nottingham Forest for £1m, Manchester United midfielder Danny Drinkwater and Stoke City winger Ben Marshall for undisclosed fees and took Nathan Delfouneso on loan from Aston Villa.

West Ham United added three more names to their long list of strikers when they brought in Nicky Maynard, Ricardo Vaz Te and Ravel Morrison.

Fans at other clubs will look on and wonder how that can be as clubs gear up for FFP.

"There are no consequences, yet," said Glick.

"You could argue we did similar in 2008-09. We spent more, maybe because we had more to spend and maybe we were not as thoughtful about how we spent it.

"It is easy to pay a player more than he should be.

"We are getting better at that.

"We have been working on getting in shape – the wage bill, the squad, the youth development, and all of the systems that can get us performing without having to run the biggest wage bill in the league.

"We would be fit as a club if FFP came in tomorrow. We are getting closer to the point where we are balancing.

"We are not there yet but we are closer and so we are in a strong position in terms of compliance.

"For us now, we are almost not concerned about compliance, we are just concerned about performance.

"We now know how we want to work, at what level we are going to budget and so now it is about how do we keep the players on the pitch. How do we get the most out of the players? How do we win games? How do we keep bringing the young players through?

"That is a product of what has gone on in the last three years.

"So for us there will not be much debate about how we are going to get ourselves in compliance. We will leave that to other clubs."

Some costs incurred by clubs are likely to be exempt in the Financial Fair Play framework.

"These might be youth development, community-relation spend and spend on capital improvements to facilities," Glick explained.

"The reason for this is not to just let teams lose more money as much as to encourage investment in other areas that are important for a club to invest in."

The next Football League meeting is on February 16.