THE much-anticipated takeover of Wanderers is OFF, with the prospective buyers pulling out of the deal.

Supporters have been eagerly awaiting the announcement of the Football Ventures (Whites) consortium taking the majority shareholding and bringing to a close the often-controversial tenure of Ken Anderson.

However, The Bolton News understands that, despite talks reaching an advanced stage, the four-strong consortium headed by Parminder Basran and Sharon Brittan has ended its interest in buying overall control of the club.

The end of negotiations leaves Anderson in charge – and having to contemplate his next move – ahead of the club’s summoning to the High Court on Wednesday over a winding-up petition by HM Revenue and Customs, the second by HMRC and the third issued this year.

Supporters, staff members and especially the chairman had been hoping a deal could be struck quickly, with many hopeful it would be completed long before tomorrow’s Championship clash at Wigan.

But, after it looked like talks would continue into next week, the deal has now been called off, though an official announcement by Wanderers has yet to be issued.

Club staff were unable to provide an official comment and consultants, bound by confidentiality agreements, also opted not to speak on the matter.

READ MORE: Whites weighing up all the options for Latics

While the breakdown of talks will be a crushing blow to everyone involved, assistant manager Steve Parkin, facing questions at this afternoon's press conference, said they cannot focus on anything other than taking care of their own business at the DW Stadium.

“It’ll be difficult because there’ll be a lot of talk about it but the one thing about us as a staff is that we’re a tight bunch,” he said.

“We can’t let anything that’s happening off the pitch have any influence but we can certainly have an influence tomorrow at three o’clock and we’ve got make sure we put all our energies into that.

“One thing we’ve tried to do throughout is to concentrate on what we do on the training ground and leave that to the people back at the club.

“Whatever else happens is beyond our control.”