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Hull City owners Assem and Ehab Allam remain confident a takeover can be completed inside the next month after a consortium led by former chairman Paul Duffen concluded a period of due diligence.

The Allam family have been in talks with potential suitors for the last two months as they attempt to finally offload a club they have owned since 2010, maintaining a sale could come before the turn of the year.

Sources have indicated that progress has been made in recent weeks, with Duffen and a group of investors believed to be from Saudi Arabia leading the way.

The Mail understands that a process of due diligence undertaken by that consortium ended on November 9 and produced no apparent stumbling blocks to the proposed deal.

(Image: Kate Woolhouse)

Advanced talks are still ongoing as the Allam family aim to agree the structuring of a sale, but it is their continued “hope and desire” that a takeover can be struck in the coming weeks.

Supporters are yearning for a fresh start following a period of steep decline under the Allams.

Since falling out of the Premier League in 2016-17, the Tigers have languished in the lower reaches of the Championship with an average attendance of under 13,000.

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Duffen, who served the club between 2007 and 2009, is determined to return to the KCOM Stadium and believes he can help to trigger a turnaround a fortunes in the Championship. The identity of his backers, though, remains unknown.

City, who return to action when hosting Nottingham Forest this weekend, yesterday repeated that it was "business as usual" amid the ongoing uncertainty.

“As has been mentioned in a recent press interview, the club is currently going through a sale process with the hope and desire for this to be completed before Christmas,” a City spokesperson told the Mail.

“Until such time as the sale has been completed, it is business as usual for the club.”

City told their Supporters Committee group at the end of last month that “numerous bidders” were still in talks to buy the Allams’ 100 per cent shareholding.

Sports crowd micro-financing business SportyCo made it clear in October that they intended to launch a £45m offer with the backing of Hull City Supporters Trust, while a third US-based consortium were also believed to have made contact with City’s owners.

Any takeover would be subject to the Football League’s Owners’ and Directors’ Test, something that scuppered the proposed sale of City to the Dai family in 2016.