Neil Hallam: Come on you guys, give us the full picture on Rams investment

HELLO again. How nice to be back.

The last time I clocked on for my first shift on this newspaper, D.H. Lawrence's mucky book "Lady Chatterley's Lover" had just been cleared of obscenity charges, the Beatles were playing in a strip club in Hamburg, J.F. Kennedy was days away from winning the American presidency, Cassius Clay was the newly-crowned Olympic heavyweight champion and I was sulking because my mum had made me start work in my faded Herbert Strutt Grammar School blazer with a clean patch where the badge had been removed.

The "Swinging Sixties," or in my case the "Swaying Unsteadily Sixties," had yet to change the social landscape. A new species of human being, the teenager, had yet to invent sex.

And most astonishing to those who have followed Derby County's progress from triumph to failure and back and from one financial crisis and takeover to the next, Rams coverage in the Telegraph in those days was limited to Wilf Shaw's match reports plus brief stories about groin strains and the fact that manager Harry Storer was contemplating team changes.

The identity of the club's directors was a mystery to most fans, the finances got a mention only when annual accounts decidedly thin on detail were published and if the club had politics, power struggles or personality clashes, they were kept well clear of public view. Both media and public regarded them as none of their business.

How different things have become. Every football club's affairs are examined in minute detail these days and though I confess to a fogeyish yearning for much in the past, a return to those days when public accountability was considered necessary by neither the Rams board nor the local media would clearly be absurd and a neglect of responsibility.

Supporters now feel they have a right to know absolutely everything that happens within the club they follow with such passion and since they, ultimately, pay for everything in football, it strikes me as entirely proper that their curiosity should be met with complete candour.

They buy the tickets and the replica shirts. It is their custom that provides the money pumped into the game by television. They reward sponsors and advertisers by patronising their businesses, using their services and purchasing their products.

All too often in the past, alas, they have been repaid for their loyalty and generosity with nothing more substantial than empty platitudes and dollops of flattery instead of factual detail and the club has more than once careered towards oblivion to an accompaniment of cheery assurances from the boardroom.

Robert Maxwell promised the earth before bleeding the place white.

Lionel Pickering was still saying "What crisis?" only weeks before he was ousted with debts running at around £32m.

Jeremy Keith was still telling supporters that everything was in perfect running order right up to the moment the Three Amigos were turfed out with debts zooming towards £56m.

Now, as a new season approaches, questions about the financial governance of the club have surfaced once more, following the removal of Peter Gadsby from his non-executive directorship after 20 years of service that involved supervising the construction of Pride Park Stadium, removing the Amigos and much of their debt mountain, leading the club to promotion and providing Billy Davies with £25m of transfer cash.

These questions were not, as some attempted to suggest, of exclusive concern to him. I had, indeed, heard the same points made elsewhere only a few days before an article in one of the national papers sparked off the latest bout of internecine strife.

Nagging doubts had also been surfacing among supporters for weeks before the former chairman locked horns with the club's new owners but, yet again, the response from the boardroom to legitimate concerns amounts to not much more than "Trust us, we're good guys, everything's fine." For as long as that remains the case, promises of "complete transparency" from the boardroom will strike many as persiflage.

It is only months, remember, since supporters were being told that the arrival of new American owners would change the financial landscape at Pride Park, with around £50m to buy up the shares, remove all debt and provide spending money for the manager.

Football chairman Adam Pearson, indeed, soared higher than that in one press briefing just after the takeover.

"You guys have been bandying figures circa a hundred and twenty million, a hundred million dollars, which you wouldn't be far away on. It's a big figure in this financial climate," he said.

Little wonder, then, that some supporters have been perplexed to see the manager trading mainly in free transfers and lower division players untried at Championship level this summer, despite raking in around £6.5m from the sale of several of the club's highest earners.

With no sign yet of that transfer pot from the board, the inevitable impression is that manager Paul Jewell has been subsidising the club with his transfer activity rather than the other way around and, with the big kick-off two days away, concerns remain.

Have the current owners put in new money since podding up around £14m in part payment for the former directors' shares in January and, if so, when and how much?

What is the current level of debt, if any? When will Jewell get that transfer jackpot?

Come on. You can trust us. We're nice guys too.