Newcastle to be sold in November

He said: “It’s been a month of extraordinary turbulence in all the world’s financial markets but we’ve been progressing with this, we’ve been sieving and sifting.

“We’ve been talking to a shortlist of interested parties. There are seven parties with whom we are still having talks.

“There isn’t an official deadline but we all know what importance people have in respect to the transfer windows.

“We would expect any new buyer to be in place with his manager to have the opportunity to assess the team as to what needs to be done in January.

“Somebody would want four to five, maybe six weeks to do that, which takes us broadly to the middle of November.”