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Mark Palios, a former Tranmere player and a former chief executive of the Football Association, is in talks to buy the financially troubled Wirral club.

The ECHO understands Palios is currently in takeover negotiations with Rovers owner Peter Johnson about purchasing his 90% stake at Prenton Park.

Birkenhead born Palios, 61, who now lives in Hertfordshire, is looking to gain control of his hometown club as an individual, rather than as a head of a consortium.

Tranmere would make no official comment on the issue. However, Palios was at Prenton Park last month, attending the pre-season friendly between Rovers and Everton.

Palios built up his wealth from a successful career in business and finance. He is an award-winning specialist in turning around struggling businesses, a description which fits Tranmere’s current predicament.

Rovers are about to start the new League Two season, which kicks off next weekend, under a financial cloud.

The club introduced a range of cutbacks in a restructuring plan which followed relegation to the Football League basement division in May and the failure of takeover talks with other potential buyers last season.

They owe more than £5m in historical debt to Johnson, the Birkenhead born businessman who bought Tranmere out of administration in 1987. They also owe £2m to the Allied Irish Bank.

Johnson is understood to have pumped a further £1m into the club last season to pay the bills as Rovers struggled to cope with falling revenues and rising costs on day-to-day operations.

A number of staff were made redundant and new manager, Rob Edwards, will be operating this season with one of the smallest budgets in League Two.

Palios has an attractive CV as a potential buyer of Tranmere.

The former professional footballer played more than 260 games for Rovers in two spells, between 1973 and 1980 and then from 1982 to 1984.

He is remembered by older Rovers fans for a man-to-man marking job on Alan Ball which helped Tranmere secure a famous 1-0 win over Arsenal in the League Cup at Highbury in 1973.

While Palios was serving as an industrious midfielder for Tranmere and Crewe Alexandra, where he spent two years, both clubs allowed him to pursue a parallel career in accountancy.

He developed a career as a chartered accountant with Arthur Young and later became a senior partner in Price Waterhouse Coopers, specialising in business turnaround.

He was voted Turnaround Financier of the Year by the Turnaround Finance Group in 2003. Later the same year Palios accepted the post of chief executive at the FA.

Palios was with English football’s governing body for just over a year, during which time he resolved the finances of the new Wembley Stadium and help to stabilise the FA’s financial position.

However, he resigned in August 2004 following media revelations about his brief relationship with Faria Alam, an FA secretary also had an affair with Sven Goran Eriksson, the England manager at the time.

Palios was a single man at the time and maintained he had done nothing wrong but stepped down to protect his five children from the glare of publicity.

Palios was reportedly regarded by some FA insiders as the best chief executive officer the organisation had recruited in many years.

He returned to work as a consultant in business turnaround and in recent years has appeared on TV as a commentator on football and finance issues.

Johnson was close to agreeing the sale of Tranmere last season with Wirral born property developer Michael Wilde. The 73-year-old called off the deal after negotiations had reached an advanced stage.

Jeremy Butler, who had been on Wilde’s negotiating team, was then invited by Johnson to become Tranmere’s new chief executive with a brief to drive through the restructuring plan.

Although Rovers may be described as cash poor, they are asset rich, owning nine acres of land at Prenton Park and six acres at nearby Ingleborough Road.

Wirral council are due to decide soon on Tranmere’s revised planning application to build 90 homes on the Ingleborough Road site, a revenue generating project that is linked to the development of a new training facility at Leasowe Road in Wallasey.