BLACKPOOL Football Club chairman Vicki Oyston has kicked a second takeover bid into touch.

The new £1.5m bid to take over Blackpool Football Club and its players only, leaving the Bloomfield Road site to the Oyston family, was made yesterday (Jan 21) by a consortium led by club vice-president David Haythornthwaite.

An earlier bid of £4m for the club and all its assets was turned down in the New Year.

Mr Haythornthwaite said in a letter to Mrs Oyston he had "a genuine ambition to restore Blackpool FC to its traditional place as one of the foremost clubs in the land."

The new bid depended on being able to lease Bloomfield Road for matches at a peppercorn rent until a new stadium was built.

However, Mrs Oyston repeated her assertion the club was not for sale and spent last night fielding questions at a fans' forum about the directors' scheme for a 40,000-seat new stadium at Whyndyke Farm.

Mr Haythornthwaite's consortium is behind a 25,000-seat stadium and 8,000-seat arena scheme on the same site.

The Blackpool Independent Supporters Association is ballotting its members on which scheme to support before Blackpool's match with Wigan on January 31.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.