Alex Jones

Seems like Birmingham doesn't want to deal with us anymore. Dome said on the radio that they want Alex to stay for a bit so they can assess him, before he arrived Ernie said that even though he was contracted to Birmingham the club had been following Alex for 9 months and wanted to sign him long term.

The manager of Birmingham was quoted as saying it was a slap in the face and

"They've asked if they can have a look at him for a little bit longer, but I think I'll politely refuse that one and he won't be doing that. "

So NZF have undone relationships and months of work.

Nice one.

So this. Lots of comments at the moment that are a bit sh*tty people. 

(not exempting myself from that either lol)

And this is what I meant when I posted yesterday that this will hurt us when it comes to transfers or loans from overseas,  It's affected us more as a club then the likes of NZF

This is, of course, premised on an assumption that the deal/agreement between clubs and the player was reached on the Thursday. But if it was, then the paperwork would surely have been sent through on Thursday?

If there was no such agreement on Thursday, however, then your suggestion of giving away commercially sensitive information to a third party before the deal was done and thus opening the door for another club to offer better terms to the player (or his club) doesn't exactly seem the most prudent approach to recruiting players.

Yep. Agreed. It will have reprucssions that will last years.

We may, or may not, be signing someone at some point over the next few days, which may mean you'll have to do something at some point during those days. Yes, super-useful, and would have completely fixed this situation.

Can anyone confirm that that there was no contact between the Nix and NZF after the initial application was sent, or is this just speculation?

 We know that NZF worked on processing the transfer on Tuesday. If NZF had the transfer in their possession and were working on processing it and sending it to FIFA then Dome chasing it up on Tuesday would have not have helped.

The problem was not that NZF had no knowledge of the transfer...they did. They just screwed up getting it to FIFA on time. Not the Nix's fault

IBTL.

No confirmation, yes to speculation.

In fact wasn't it said that the nix were "in contact throughout"? 

So the exact opposite.

Beggars belief that this argument is still going around. 

End of the day some late communication between the parties would probably been useful - but shouldn't have been necessary (if NZF had played their part given they had been given adequate comms and time)

Nzf said on the radio that they had no idea that a signing was going to happen. They wouldn't elaborate on whether on not the phoenix rang them to say that it was going through.

The phoenix should probably have told them to expect something, but this want last minute there were three days to process it, and nzf should have known that the nix had three players out on long term injury, had sacked another player, and had two import slots available so was likely to be active.

That's fair.  But for all we know they did and that person at NZF forgot, or they told the guy that quit and they guy that quit forgot to tell the guy that was going on leave in an internet dead zone.

NZF had no idea? I'm to lazy to find articles and news releases, but it was well known that Alex Jones was coming, remember the drama that his flight got delayed? I said before everyone with slight interest in football should have known the Guy is coming.

NZF tried to put the data into the FIFA system, I would panicked the moment I could not figure it out. Called my Boss maybe the Nix itself, guessing they figured the software, and let them talk me through. If I'm new and would be to a shamed to ask question then you have to ask how NZf is managing people.

Nix and NZF seems to have a bad relationship which result in horrible communication, a simple follow up on their side should have solved it.

Dome: "We all learned from it"

No, the flights, etc, happened after NZF had received the transfer request, he actually didn't leave the UK until the 4th which was after the window closed so I wonder if NZF had swept under the carpet the transfer issues even back then. They would have known that they missed the deadline. 

So timeline:

Phoenix submitted the paperwork to NZF on the 30th

They announced the player on the 1st (Simon Hampton wrote an article saying that the Phoenix shouldn't have announced the player until the paperwork cleared, but that seems a bit harsh if the extent of what NZF needed to do that has been speculated is correct)

The window closed on the 2nd

NZF submitted the manual paperwork on the 3rd

The player left for NZ on the 4th, at this point NZF and presumably the Phoenix would have known that there were issues.

Arrived in NZ on the 6th

It was announced that there were issues on the 11th

The decision was declined on the 16th

Alex left on the 18th and is now on a stop over in Sydney.

So what happened between the 3rd when they knew there were issues and the 11th when the fact that there were issues was announced? And why did the player even get on a flight when it would have been clear that there was going to be a problem from the 3rd and everyone who knows anything about FIFA knew it was a certainty that the loan agreement would be declined?

So either the Phoenix were incredibly naive or NZF weren't being honest with them.

I'm willing to give NZF the benefit of the doubt here, that the poor admin staff person who had never been trained to use the system, and had this task thrown at them didn't realise just how unmovable FIFA is so assumed that sending a fix the next day would be acceptable. But the fact is that there was still time to stop Alex from even wasting his time by getting on a flight.

Your right, I work to much! I missed a whole week!

Agree with your post except this

Unfortunately these guys have gone way beyond the point where they deserve any benefit of doubt imo

By giving them the benefit of the doubt I mean that the thing happened by incompetence and, despite all the problems they have had with FIFA and FIFA's unbending interpretation of their rules, thought that it wouldn't be a big deal and therefore told the Phoenix not to worry about it. The other alternative is that either the Phoenix misled the player and got him over here on false pretenses just to assess him, or that NZF misled the Phoenix about the status of the loan agreement in the hope that something, anything would happen.

NZF have been shark for decades!! there an absolute useless organisation 

Seems like he's landed back on his feet, scored the winner in his first game back at the under 21's. 

Article about him here:

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/foo...

Loaned out to Port Vale. Subject to paper work I presume. 

sorry NZF ruined your career, Alex. 

He seems to be doing alright for himself at Port vale and banging in some regular goals and still young. Could he be our best signing that never played for us?