Defoe misses out on Spurs return

In typical fashion, as the way things seem to go involving Pompey - it is never straight forward, it has been confirmed that Jermain Defoe cannot feature again Spurs this weekend, as rules regarding loan deals then becoming permanent prevent this…

In fairness to Pompey, this does not appear to be our fault - unless we get a nasty surprise in the summer and he still has not signed for us after all, which we have been told he has, although I do not seriously think this is the case - as it is the rules that the premier league have in place that means he cannot face Spurs, a premier league spokesman said: 'the rules are clear. A player who is taken on loan and then during the course of the transfer window, if that loan is made permanent, he is not allowed to play against the team who originally loaned him'.

Apparently Harry Redknapp was first made aware of this by Peter Storrie on Wednesday, and as Redknapp told sky sports news this ruling has frustrated him, and he also feels it is a 'silly' one: 'it was news to me to be honest.

'What happened was we took Jermain on transfer deadline day night and obviously the Benjani deal was dragging on. And that wasn't getting done, so for us to get this through on time, Peter Storrie had to do it as a loan and then convert it to a full transfer after.

'By the time Benji had agreed at Man City it was in danger of over running the window. That was what the problem was. We couldn't agree it until that was done at Manchester City.

'We had to do a loan deal but it got converted to a full deal almost immediately. Now they are saying because it was a loan you can't go on loan and play against the club that loaned you out. It's a load of nonsense, it's some silly rule. There's nothing we can do about it.

'When was it made clear? I think it was last night. Peter rang me up and said 'we could have a problem here with Jermain'. But he thought it might be solved easily enough.

'We were all looking forward to him playing at White Hart Lane. He was popular there. It's nonsense really. It's been converted to a transfer and it only happened because the Benjani deal took so long. We couldn't complete the Jermain deal without the money. It was a back-to-back deal.

'Peter has been talking to people all day but it's difficult to change it at this stage. It's a blow'.

Benjani never actually went on loan to Man City as best I know, but it will be interesting to see if he will be allowed to play against us when we meet next month - which I will assume he will?

It is interesting though that Javier Mascherano did play against West Ham just a few weeks back however, despite having been on a similar long term loan deal from West Ham to Liverpool, only making it permanent recently… the spokesman said 'the rules are clear', this example seems to make it less clear to me, unless the 'ownership' issues of the Argentinean made things different in his case?

PLAY UP POMPEY!