Going out on a limb here, but someone who is an agent ought to be automatically ineligible to own a club, regardless of the source of their funds. https://twitter.com/CraigHope_DM/status/1390060119484928000

In years to come, Derby will be seen as the ultimate example of the need for ownership reform. Mel Morris: not an asset stripper, not a vulture capitalist, not an oligarch seeking respectability nor a sportswashing despotic regime. Just a local lad who didn't know when to stop.

Almost no one has pockets deep enough to support a multi-year attempt to get out of the Championship. That Mel Morris was doing it for the right reasons proves that even ownership reform isn't enough. If you don't change the finances, human frailty will kill clubs.

The signs have been there for years. It should've been achingly apparent not just that letting clubs sell their grounds to juke FFP was bad but also that the clubs that did it first must inevitably be in the deepest shit.

Some Derby fans argued it would be fine because "Mel would never let anything bad happen to the club". But Mel *was* the bad thing happening to the club. Any owner who can't resist the financial imperatives of the Championship, for whatever reason, is a risk to their club.

And now the club is in deep trouble, two points of relegation, ever increasing debts and doesn't own its ground. Who wants to buy that? Primarily chancers, schemers and a host of people with no feeling for the club.

One person, no matter how rich, can't be trusted to run a club alone. Prospective (and current) owners need to thoroughly and continually vetted. And we need to reform football finances to stop the PL creating chaos in the EFL and to control owners who don't know when to stop.

It's essential to understand that the mess in the Championship is a direct and predictable product of PL policy. It benefits the PL at the expense of the EFL. It's man-made chaos and it can be unmade the moment we break the PL's control over English football's finances.