Mel Morris did himself no favours at Derby County with stubborn 2021 call: View | OneFootball

The former Rams owner agreed to sell the club to Erik Alonso at the end of the 2020/21 campaign, but it was a deal that went up in flames.

Derby County's 2020/21 campaign was a disaster, both on and off the pitch.

After recovering from a poor start to the season the year prior, the Rams finished 10th in the Championship in 2019/20 under the guidance of Phillip Cocu, and many supporters hoped that the summer would bring the signings needed to make the next step.

However, an atrocious opening few months saw the former Barcelona midfielder lose his job, with Wayne Rooney taking over originally as the interim manager, before being given the job on a permanent basis.

A fantastic run of form over the Christmas period saw the Rams take gigantic steps towards safety, but another stretch of games that yielded limited points slid Derby back towards danger.

It took until the last day of the season for Rooney's side to secure their safety, and they still have Martyn Waghorn and Patrick Roberts to thank for their role in the 3-3 draw against Sheffield Wednesday. But, beneath the surface, a greater issue was growing.

Mel Morris should never have tried to sell to Erik Alonso

Financially, Derby were a bit of a mess, to say the very least, in 2020, and had stayed away from breaking financial rules at that point by selling their stadium to owner Mel Morris for £80 million in 2019.

Morris was looking to offload the club after drawing up huge debts, hoping to cut his losses and leave before the inevitable happened in September 2021.

In April 2020, it was revealed that the now former owner had agreed a deal to sell Derby to No Limits Sports Limited, fronted by former Sheffield Wednesday owner Erik Alonso.

It was a deal that sparked fears from many outside of Pride Park due to the links that he had in the past with Dejphon Chansiri, and comments made by Alonso himself seemed ill-timed and unprofessional.

Despite the Rams struggling at the bottom of the Championship, the then 29-year-old spoke about taking the club to the Champions League during his potential tenure. It was silly to say such things, particularly when just a month later the deal fell through.

A lack of funds proved to be Alonso's downfall

By the time the 2020/21 campaign was over, Derby had been through an incredibly tough eight months. Poor form, a relegation battle and two failed takeovers had plagued what had originally been a promising season, and no ownership was taken over such failures.

Alonso had failed to show that he had the required funds to complete the deal, and it left Morris with no other option than to keep charge of the Rams.

It was only in February 2021 when the then Derby president had called off another potential takeover from Derventio Holdings. Sheikh Khaled had previously proposed a £60 million offer, but similar to Alonso, he failed to provide evidence that he could afford to pay the money, after months of stalling.

Supporters were looking for an end to the chaos that had surrounded the club, but there was no end in sight. Following the conclusion of the campaign, EFL chief executive, Trevor Birch, explained on TalkSport why the deal did not happen.

After Birch was played a video of Alonso explaining his targets, he said: "As he said in that piece there, he asked us not to trust his words and we didn’t, we asked for some tangible proof which unfortunately he wasn’t able to deliver.

"Unfortunately it’s a lengthy process if someone approaches a club and isn’t a known quantity."

He continued: "If someone, say, has sold a business for hundreds of millions, it’s in the public domain, he’s a known individual – that’s quite a straight forward review of his suitability.

"Someone who has no visible means and isn’t a public figure, it’s very difficult to find the evidence to carry out that proper test."

With Alonso once again out of the picture, Morris was forced to take the club through the summer, before placing Derby into administration in September 2021, leading to nearly a full year of uncertainty, relegation to League One and near extinction.