Oxford United have been given another deadline for coming up with a date for construction work to restart on the football club's new stadium at Minchery Farm.

The club had been given until yesterday to give Oxford City Council a date for when work on the half-built stadium would begin again - and how the club would pay for it.

Councillors have now extended the deadline to 4pm on Monday, July 27 - the date of the next full council meeting.

City council officers and councillors met United's managing director, Keith Cox, representatives of construction company Taylor Woodrow and a consortium which is proposing to buy the club, at a specially-convened meeting yesterday.

Oxford Mail reporter Chris Koenig and photographer Jon Lewis were escorted away from the meeting by a council officer.

After the meeting Tony Stockford, one of the councillors representing a ward adjoining the new stadium, told the Oxford Mail: "I am more hopeful that the club will be able to go ahead than I was before."

The council said in a statement after the meeting that work on the stadium could restart in November - provided negotiations with the new buyer over the summer proved successful.

That would mean the new stadium would be ready for the 1999/ 2000 season.

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