The FFA were due to name the successful bids last month but the boardroom coup which saw four new directors and a new chairman come in put the decision on the back burner.

New FFA chairman Chris Nikou said the board would tackle the issue as soon as possible but admitted the bids would have to be scrutinised by the new directors.

The expansion bids are now set to go before the board in the middle of next month – which could give the new clubs just six months to get their squads and infrastructure in place before pre-season begins.

Sources within A-League owners have already told FTBL the timeline could be too short and expansion could be delayed for yet another year.

But today Gallop told SEN radio that he was hopeful of getting fresh blood into the league by the start of next season.

"It's certainly on the to do list for the next few weeks to see if we can get to a point to make sure that the bids are in the best possible position," he said this morning.

"They've all got strengths but they've also probably got deficiencies that we are still talking to them about, whether it's financial, infrastructure...

"Inevitably in these things, nothing perfect comes comes through. We want to do some more work over that in the next few weeks because the goal is still the 2019/20 season.

"Some decisions need to be made relatively quickly."

He insisted it was still a practical timeline, but said the clock was ticking.

"As long as we move relatively quickly," he said. "I'm talking perhaps the end of January would would start to get difficult, I think.

"But there's a board meeting in the middle of December and we're looking for to make some decisions around that.

"If it proves impossible and we stretch out into the month or so after that it won't be impossible, just start to get harder for whoever's successful to be ready for the 19/20 season."

Gallop also said that although the board was only looking to add two teams in this round of expansion, the long-term plan was still to take it to 14 or 16 teams in the long term.

And he opened the door for any unsuccessful clubs in this round to be included later.

He added: "We're looking at the bids as to what would make sense soon – and then what would perhaps be there for the game to keep close to for the future."