OLDHAM Athletic owner Abdallah Lemsagam still intends to sell the club, but a takeover is unlikely to happen until the court case with landlords Brass Bank has reached a conclusion.

That is the view of club advisor, and former director, Barry Owen, who has been working on a plan for Latics to retrieve ownership of the North Stand, with club officials believing the structure was incorrectly surrendered by the council.

Court proceedings were lodged in December in an effort to settle a long-standing dispute between the club’s former owner, Simon Blitz - who owns Brass Bank, and current owner Lemsagam over rental arrangements and usage.

After protests and pitch invasions had punctuated the start of the season, the following month Lemsagam announced he was prepared to listen to offers for a club he has owned since early 2018.

However, while there has been reported interest from a number of parties, little progress appears to have been made, with the court case believed to be the biggest factor in the hold-up.

Asked if it was still Lemsagam’s intention to sell, Owen said: "Of course it is. He wants to sell, but he will only sell at the right conditions.

"I think he's mindful that he wants to sell to the right people because by selling to the right people he will only reap the rewards from it. But there can be no doubt that it is made difficult by the pending litigation.

"If you were a businessman interested in buying this facility you want to know what you're buying and who you buy off. You buy the badge off Abdallah at a price which may be inflated but then you've got the problem of ‘do I carry on running it by paying rent to the asset owner or do I try to buy the asset?’

“If you want to buy the asset you've then got a problem because there is a litigation.”

And there is no timeframe for this process.

"How long's a piece of string?,” Owen continued.

“The pleadings have gone in, I understand the lawyers are waiting for the defence papers to come back and then they'll start the process.

"If you look at it from the point of view an investor who only wants to buy a football club and is happy to rent or pay rent to the asset that (a sale) would be possible. But then the seller, Abdallah, is mindful of the court case.

"Either side could win it, obviously.

"The court could decide that the surrender of the North Stand to Brass Bank was done properly, or it could rule in favour of the club that it wasn't done properly and the stand which was heavily financed by the council for the purpose of Oldham Athletic is returned to the club.

"The council invested an awful lot of money into the stand for the purpose and the benefit of Oldham Athletic Football Club.

"We're in deep conversation with the council on that and a lot of other matters at the moment.”

Owen added: “I spent many years excited and looking forward to that facility. You've got to give Oldham Council 10 out of 10 for putting so much money into the project.

“Fans eventually will have to make their own minds up about that as to whether that stand should have been surrendered.

"But I've worked for three years on that project of looking at the legalities of how that North Stand suddenly disappeared from the ownership."

The ongoing problems at Oldham emanate from when the club went into administration in 2004. Businessmen Simon Blitz and Danny Gazal, who own Brass Bank, rescued the club that year through a new company.

Oldham Athletic (2004) AFC Ltd took over the football club and, through Brass Bank, Blitz and Gazal bought the stadium, which had previously been rented to the club from owners which included an Oldham Council partnership.

In 2011, Simon Corney became Latics’ owner and chairman when he bought Blitz and Gazal’s shares. However, Blitz and Gazal retained ownership of Boundary Park via Brass Bank.

The redeveloped North Stand (renamed The Joe Royle Stand), which opened in 2015 and includes a gym and the Oldham Event Centre (OEC), which is now owned by the Fan Led Group, came to the forefront of a messy dispute between the club, landlord and council.

In 2010, Blitz bought a site in Failsworth, via a separate company, on the basis that Oldham Council would provide land adjacent required for the club to relocate.

When that land could not be provided, the council agreed to buy the site from Blitz, eventually paying £3.1m for it and requesting that the deal was structured as a back-to-back transaction involving the club. Blitz would sell the land to the club, who would then immediately sell it on to the council, with the money paid to Blitz’s company to recoup its investment. That deal took place and was registered at the Land Registry.