Stoke winger Liam Lawrence is still waiting for clearance over his deadline-day switch to Portsmouth.
Lawrence joined Pompey as part of the deal with took Marc Wilson to the Britannia Stadium, but the move has still not been ‘okayed’ by the Football League who are not convinced the necessary documents were completed a time.
However, administrator Andrew Andrinikou insists they beat the 6pm cut-off point and is confident Lawrence will soon become a Portsmouth player.
He told the Portsmouth News: “Unfortunately, we are not Tottenham and are not allowed to have this issue sorted the next day as they did with Rafael van der Vaart.
“This sort of thing will only happen to us. There is proper brinkmanship going on just because we are Portsmouth Football Club.
“The whole world knew two weeks before that we wanted this deal to happen. Unfortunately, they have been finding ways of making things difficult to actually push it through.
“From our end, all the documentation was sent on time, well before the 6pm deadline. I was there myself to see it.
“Admittedly, the deal happened a little later than we would have liked as the player was training with the Republic of Ireland squad. We haven’t had chance to give him a medical yet. But it was sorted before 6pm, I can tell you.
“The authorities also reckon the Tommy Smith deal to QPR was completed at 6.02pm or something like that. This puts more work on us but we are determined to see it through, even if we have to get the player on loan instead.”