Terms agreed on delayed Morecambe takeover

Morecambe finished bottom of the EFL last season

Terms have been agreed on the protracted takeover of Morecambe by Panjab Warriors, current Shrimps owner Jason Whittingham has said.

A turbulent week at the National League side saw the board threaten to place Morecambe into administration if Whittingham did not complete the sale of the club on Tuesday.

Whittingham subsequently sought to remove the board the following day.

However, the deal between Whittingham's Bond Group Investments and Panjab Warriors has now been struck and is set to be formally completed on Monday, 7 July.

The Shrimps were relegated from League Two last season after 18 years in the English Football League (EFL).

In a statement on the club website, Whittingham said he had invited the "former directors" back to the board to "oversee the final stages of the sale process" and they have subsequently "unanimously agreed".

"All we can promise is that we will do everything in our powers to make it happen, get wages paid, and begin at last to look forwards," they said in their own statement.

A positive end to difficult period

Morecambe's MP Lizzi Collinge said on Monday that Bond Group should "get on with" the deal to sell the 105-year-old club.

On Tuesday, the directors initially released a statement saying they would give Whittingham until 16:00 BST to sell his shares, before allowing an extra two hours after "new information came to light".

This second deadline passed without the sale going through and in a third statement of the day, the board said that they would be contacting administrators "at the earliest opportunity", on Wednesday.

Whittingham then released a statement of his own on Wednesday saying he had "started the process to dismiss the board of directors with immediate effect in order that we can take control over the situation", while denying claims he was stalling on the deal.

Whittingham, who oversaw the takeover of the club in 2018, previously told BBC Radio Lancashire that he "could not wait to get out" of the then League Two club in an interview in January.

Since then the club, which reached League One in 2021, have been relegated from the EFL, meaning they will play in the National League next season for the first time since 2007.

The deal to sell the club to Panjab Warriors was approved by the EFL earlier in June.

Panjab Warriors said last week they had already paid £3.8m to Bond Group, alongside a separate payment of £630,000 to clear outstanding loans against the club.

The group claimed they had also loaned a further £1.7m to the club over the past 14 months to "ensure its ongoing survival".