Midfielder to face fourth game watching on
Exeter City manager Paul Tisdale confirmed that midfielder David Noble will have to sit out a fourth game on the spin before he can become eligible to play for the Grecians again.Noble has been unable to play for Exeter since the expiration of his 93-day emergency loan after the home victory against Carlisle United last month.
While the midfielder is fully fit and raring to play, the shifting transfer deadline day this winter to open on January 3rd has complicated the situation and meant that David cannot register in time to feature against Accrington Stanley.
“David will not be available unfortunately,” Paul said. “It is a strange situation with registrations that if we were signing a loan player, he could be available for tomorrow – but a permanent signing can’t be. So he’ll have to wait another week.
“It is frustrating and it has been a bit of an inconvenience. I only found out this morning that it can’t be done.
“You have a situation where FIFA have certain regulations which they impose on Football Associations – and then we have this slight shift in the window to the 3rd [of January] which runs until February this year because the end of the window would fall at a weekend.
“Then we have a strange situation where the rules are that if you’re signing a playing on loan, that player has to be signed before noon on the day of the game – so if you’re a loan player you can be signed tomorrow morning to play in the afternoon.
“If you are signing as a permanent contract, you have to be signed on noon the day prior to the game. That’s standard, but because the window doesn’t open until tomorrow, David would need to be signed today. We can’t sign him on loan because he’s not at any club.
“He has fallen between the cracks and there’s nothing we can do about it, and we didn’t realise that until this morning when the registration was sent back to us.
“There is no blame anywhere that I can look for – it’s just the way it has fallen and it’s the anomaly. They are the rules and it is a difficult one to get to the bottom of, but it’s a shame.”