LIVERPOOL -- Everton's attempts to move to a new stadium are in danger of failure amid a dispute with the local council and the Mayor of Liverpool.
Club chief executive Robert Elstone has argued that Liverpool City Council are not doing enough to make the project a reality.
But Joe Anderson, the city's mayor, has suggested that it is Everton who are causing the project to be delayed.
The club confirmed in September 2014 that they were interesting in moving to Walton Hall Park, which is less than a mile from their current home, but have still not got as far as submitting a planning application.
Everton want to move to a stadium with greater potential to generate commercial revenue. Goodison Park, their home since 1892, has a capacity of 39,571, few corporate facilities and little room for expansion, as it is hemmed in by housing.
The club are supposed to be working with the council and local housing association Liverpool Mutual Homes on plans that would see a stadium and new homes built as part of a major regeneration project.
But Elstone told Everton's annual general meeting at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall on Monday that so little progress had been made, that the club have not ruled out expanding their current home if the deal collapses.
He said: "I've heard the Mayor say he's disappointed in lack of progress. But we're looking at massive regeneration in Liverpool. The onus can't just be on us.
"We don't have a true partnership at the moment. The city council keeps saying it wants to help us. We need to know what that means.
"We need to know what level of investment and support they're prepared to put in.
"Redeveloping Goodison is going to be really difficult. It's questionable as to whether you get a commercial return.
"If Walton Hall Park doesn't progress, maybe that becomes a more viable opportunity.
"But we need a partnership with the local council, and at the moment, we don't have that. It's a vision for north Liverpool that includes a stadium. I don't think the council sees it that way."
Anderson, though, immediately hit back with a sarcastic response on Twitter, suggesting that the club had not made as much progress with their end of the project as he claimed.
"Regarding the chief executive's comments at the AGM that they are ready on the stadium," he wrote. "I am looking forward to receiving their planning and financial proposals tomorrow."
Everton first went public with plans to leave their current home in 1996, when then-chairman Peter Johnson announced proposals to build a 60,000-capacity stadium.
Plans were drawn up for a 55,000-seater stadium at King's Dock, on the city's waterfront, in 2001 -- but were abandoned two years later as the club could not raise enough money to fund their share of the £155 million project.
An attempted move to Kirkby, mooted in 2006, caused controversy because it would have involved moving the club out of the city for the first time in their history.
The proposal was scrapped in 2009 after a planning application was rejected by the UK government.
Everton chairman Bill Kenwright, who has been suffering with ill health in recent months, was too unwell to attend Monday's AGM.