THE protracted takeover of Crystal Palace is nearing its conclusion after CPFC 2010 reached an agreement to buy Selhurst Park.

The consortium led by Eagles fans Steve Parish and Martin Long thrashed out a deal with the stadium's administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers on Tuesday afternoon. 2010 had been set a 3pm deadline by administrator Brendan Guilfoyle to complete a deal before the liquidation of the club would begin with star players being sold.

However, to the great relief of thousands of Palace supporters who protested for two days in a row to save their club, the deadline was put on hold as the two parties finally agreed upon a conditional price.

Palace are not quite out of the woods yet, however, as 2010 still have to get a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) agreed by 75 percent of the club's creditors. The CVA is expected to be announced either today or early next week and a meeting to vote upon the proposals will be called 16 days after that.

There then comes a 28-day appeal period where any unhappy creditors can argue their case. Once that has lapsed the Football League will begin the due diligence process to ratify whether 2010 are fit and proper persons to run the club.

The time-scale for all of the above means that it will be touch and go whether Palace are officially out of administration before the start of the new season - which begins on Saturday August 7.

"I'll still be here for some time yet, but in a diluted role," confirmed Guilfoyle. "As soon as we have funding from 2010 they will be making the decisions."

At the time of going to press it remained unconfirmed whether that funding was in place, but Guilfoyle was confident that the matter would be resolved in the next few days.

He still needs to pay May's wages and must ensure the players receive their salaries before the middle of the month or they will be able to walk away from their contracts without challenge.

One of the first decisions 2010 will have to make is whether or not to reemploy the 29 members of staff who were made redundant last week.

A press conference outlining their plans is expected to be called early next week.