Given the explanation its pretty obvious where the majority of the blame lies.But to suggest the Phoenix are completely blameless is sorry being more than a bit naive. If the Phoenix did contact NZF on the Tuesday then i stand corrected. However if they failed to follow up on Tuesday as many times as was needed to be sure it had gone through.
I'd imagine that they did, but NZF were incapable of doing anything so no matter what the Phoenix did it wouldn't have helped anything.
NZF said that the Phoenix have been in contact throughout.
If you want to give the Phoenix 0.5% of blame then the only thing they perhaps could have done was give NZF a headsup that they were negotiating with someone and may or may not send a transfer through three days before the transfer window closed, you know, in case they NZD that everyone who knew how to do a transfer would be allowed to be out of the office for the last few days of the window.But I'm sure if the Phoenix told NZF everytime they were negotiating with people NZF would be pissed off as well. They gave them three days to do it, in europe they are processing transfers right up until midnight.