Bradford chief executive Julian Rhodes insists he is "confident" the club will stave off the latest threat of bankruptcy.

The First Division club are once again facing the threat of extinction if they cannot reach an agreement with mortgage lenders Lombard.

The club borrowed �7.4million from the company under a seven-year repayment scheme aimed at bringing their Valley Parade home up to Premiership standards when they achieved promotion to the top flight in 1999.

Bradford's fall into administration means the club are unable to regularly meet the instalments needed to repay the debt, which now stands at �6.2m.

With the next payment of �350,000 due to Lombard this week, chairman Gordon Gibb has been forced to go to Lombard in a last-ditch bid to restructure the bill.

Rhodes hopes Gibb's negotiations with Lombard will go some way to resolving the issue.

He said: "I am always confident that we can come to an agreement, especially when it is in both parties' interests that an agreement is reached.

"Lombard is the biggest creditor by a long, long way. We want to repay the debt to them, it is just that under the current terms we have to pay �1.4m per year.

"It is unachievable. If you look at other football clubs they have debts spread over a 25-year period.

"Our mortgage with Lombard covers just five-and-a-half years."

If no agreement is reached Lombard will be within their rights to obtain full ownership of Valley Parade with the possibility of renting it back to the club - which is something Rhodes admits Bradford would consider.

"We would consider any deal if it meant the football club staying in business, but we would prefer to own the stadium ourselves and pay it back over a longer period," he told the Bradford Telegraph & Argus.

"But up until now Lombard have taken a very hard line.

"If a deal is not done, we will carry on paying the money to them as long as we can, but at the end of the day it would mean the end of the football club."