“Have done everything we can” – Chris Kirchner delivers concerning Derby County takeover update

Derby County preferred bidder Chris Kirchner has revealed he is yet to make a breakthrough in talks on a potential deal for Pride Park and has done “everything he can” at this stage, taking to Twitter to deliver this news.

The US businessman was thought to be on the verge of completing his takeover of the second-tier side after further progress was made – but the one main hurdle that remained was the stadium issue with Mel Morris still owning the Rams’ home ground.

According to Alan Nixon, Kirchner is refusing to deal with Morris who reportedly wants £20m for the East Midlands outfit’s home patch and the former has refused to push the takeover through unless he owns the stadium.

However, Nixon has also reported that the preferred bidder was looking at potentially moving away from Pride Park to another ground for the time being until this issue was resolved, but no concrete progress on that has been reported yet.

This presents a real concern for the Rams who are at real risk of running out of cash completely shortly after the end of this season with the club losing out on the ticket revenue they have received throughout this campaign.

And although Kirchner is desperate to push a deal through, he believes he can do no more at this moment in time.

This afternoon, he posted: Looking forward to the game today and wish I had something more concrete to update. Me and my team have done everything we can. The same hurdles still remain.”

The Verdict:

This is a real concern because this stadium issue needs to be sorted before a deal goes through, so you can only hope this is a tactic by Kirchner to try and spring Morris into action.

With the latter being the man who put the club in administration, the responsibility is on his