Liam Dooley gives hopeful Shrewsbury Town takeover timeline

The Salop CEO revealed yesterday in his interview with the local press there are fresh parties interested in taking over the Shropshire side.

And while any interested buyers and the club have not gone into an exclusivity period, Dooley, who has recently become a director at the Croud Meadow, says he is hopeful something will be done before the end of the current campaign.

"I think what I would say is that it is not necessarily in our gift," when asked by the Shropshire Star if he was confident a deal would get done. "But what I would say is, if the people who want to buy the football club for the values that we are talking about at the moment – then the deal can be done.

"What we have seen in the past is that it has not been for the want of trying, and you have to have a willing buyer and a willing seller. At this stage, we have got a few people who appear to be that.

"If you want me to give you a percentage then I am not going to do that. But I am hopeful we could have something done by the end of the season."

Shrewsbury have been in this situation before. Back in January this year, they revealed two interested parties were in talks over a potential deal to purchase the Shropshire club – but it came to nothing.

This time a deal looks much closer due to the parties having similar valuations for the club with Dooley saying they are looking to go into a period of exclusivity soon.

Meanwhile, with Town’s struggles on the field in recent weeks head coach Paul Hurst believes it is wise for him to consider changing formation.

He said: “That has been very active in my mind and looking at the situation overall.

“I am not going to give too much away as to where my head has ended up but I think it would be foolish not to give that consideration.

“Sometimes you might just make a change just to see, but I don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to give Rotherham a heads up before we get the teamsheets on Saturday.”

The Town boss has said Tommi O’Reilly, Toto Nsiala and Josh Feeney – who all have injuries – have not trained much this week and it will be touch and go whether they are to be involved against Rotherham.