“It’s 50/50 they get liquidated. I can’t see how they get out of this – they’re f***ed.”

That’s how one source summed up the current plight of Derby County to The Athletic, a club that just two years ago were 90 minutes away from becoming a Premier League club again.

Since then, everything has unravelled and the club now sits bottom of the Championship with relegation all but already confirmed, after just eight games of a 46-game season completed.

The Rams currently sit on -2 points following a 12-point deduction for entering administration, with another nine-point deduction set to follow. It could be weeks or months before they’re even in the black again.

But it is because they are so in the red financially that they find themselves in their current plight.

They were put in administration late last week and are currently on the search for buyers for a club which right now is worth less than nothing.

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Any prospective buyer will have to shell out more than £60m to simply clear Derby’s debts, and that’s before spending anything on rebuilding the club or finding players to put out on the field every week. Reports suggest football creditors are owed up to £10m, £20m of secured debt is owed to an American private equity firm and £30m is owed to the taxman.

Current owner and chairman Mel Morris is estimated to have lost around £200m of his own personal fortune as a result of the club’s financial issues and has been personally footing the £2.5m monthly wage bill to make sure his staff and players are still being paid.

The story of how they got to this point is one all too familiar to those stuck in the purgatory that is the Championship.

Under the rules of the English Football League (EFL), clubs can only register debt of up to £39m over the course of three seasons. Derby had accumulated debts of £8m and £15m in 2015/16 and 2016/17 respectively and had to take the drastic measure of selling their stadium, Pride Park, for £81m to another company controlled by their owner Morris. Without that sale, which caused huge controversy for the inflated amount it was sold for, Derby would have registered a shortfall of £26m that season, to bring the total debt to £49m over the three season.

Derby and Morris were cleared of any wrongdoing in court, despite being fined £100,000 for its novel approach to accounting for transfers over the preceding three years, and set about the only solution they could think of to get out of this mess: Get promoted.

Chelsea legend Frank Lampard was brought in for the 2018/19 season and with him a whole host of new recruits joined in a massive push to gain promotion to the promised land of the Premier League and all of the untold riches that came with it.

And it nearly worked.

They reached the play-off final, considered the richest game in world football worth at least £135m to the winning team in the first season after promotion alone, with another £130m guaranteed the following year should the club avoid relegation.

Even if they were relegated after one season, the money received in parachute payments from the Premier League over the next three years would have been enough to cure all of their financial issues and provide a substantial springboard to rebuild towards another promotion.

It’s why there are so many yo-yo clubs between the Premier League and the Championship nowadays, with the likes of Norwich, Fulham, Watford and West Brom all going back and forth so regularly.

After that failed, Derby decided to push again. They were so close last time and despite the departure of Lampard to Chelsea, they brought in Dutch legend Phillip Cocu as manager and Wayne Rooney as a player/coach.

Cocu struggled to emulate Lampard’s season after a 10th-place finish in a season disrupted by COVID-19 and was shortly into his second season after a terrible start, as Rooney was promoted to become Derby’s ninth manager in five and a half years under owner Morris.

Rooney took over with the club rock bottom of the Championship and without the money to spend that his two predecessors were ill-advisedly allowed in Morris’ Hail Mary attempt to reach the Premier League.

The club, like many across Europe, had suffered huge losses as a result of the pandemic and the inability to sell tickets to their games for the 2020/21 season, accounting for, Derby claim, a shortfall in earnings of around £20m. Because of their growing financial tumour, they were deemed ineligible for the EFL’s £8.3m bailout loan over fears they’d be unable to pay it back.

“The league is disappointed with the comments made by the club in respect of COVID lending facilities,” their statement last week read. “The EFL entered into a debt raise to provide its clubs with access to funds that would support them in dealing with the impact of COVID and, as with any loan, this was subject to a timeframe and eligibility criteria which Derby County was unable to meet.”

Rooney managed keep Derby in the Championship by just one point last season, something that could now prompt further legal action from Wycombe Wanderers, who were relegated at their expense and have experienced a shortfall of £10m themselves as a result of being in League One.

They had made a decent start to the season, with 10 points from their opening eight games putting them firmly in mid-table but all of Rooney’s hard work has been undone with how the financial side of the club has been handled.

Redundancies will now follow, although Rooney has reportedly been assured that despite being the club’s highest earner, he will not be one of them. Every player will be up for sale in January too, although Derby don’t exactly have huge assets to sell off an of the team that started the 2-1 win over Stoke last weekend, only two have contracts beyond this season.

The relationship between Rooney and owner Morris has also broken down to become near non-existent, with the Manchester United legend branding him disrespectful this week.

“I have not spoken to him since August 9 and I find that a little bit disrespectful, if I’m being honest. There was no phone call, no message.

“It was not sincere or heartfelt enough [when Morris addressed club staff and players earlier this week to discuss the situation]. Staff said they got more out of a five-minute meeting with me than with 45 minutes with Mel Morris.”

Rooney, like all of his players, found out about the news on television rather than from the horse’s mouth, but according to The Athletic he has created a great sense of unity amongst the players and staff and vowed to stay on and fight in the trenches with them.

This story of another fallen giant of English football still has a long way yet to run and, even if they manage to find a buyer in the next 90 days as they are hoping to, things are going to get a lot worse before they start getting better.