The Premier League are to examine the paperwork over the transfer of Portsmouth’s Benjani Mwaruwari to Manchester City.
The deal collapsed last night after City failed to complete the registration of the Zimbabwe international striker before the midnight deadline.
City stated that due to the player’s late arrival into Manchester on Thursday they did not have enough time to complete a medical.
Pompey boss Harry Redknapp was confident of the deal going through following their capture of Spurs’ Jermain Defoe.
Portsmouth manager Harry Redknapp revealed the club had received a call at 2355 GMT – five minutes before the transfer window closed – from Manchester City saying they had completed the relevant documents to sign Benjani.
“That’s when Peter Storrie (Portsmouth chief executive) gave the go-ahead for our forms (to register Defoe) to go through,” Redknapp told BBC Radio 5 Live.
“Once their forms were sent, we had to get ours off very quickly. I thought we were struggling for time.
“Their one had dragged on a bit because Benji had a bit of a delay getting there with one thing and another,” said Redknapp.
“As far as we knew, they sent their forms so I don’t see why there should be a problem.”
If the Benjani deal does fall through, it could leave Portsmouth financially sdtrapped having banked on using the transfer fee to sign Defoe.
“If ‘Benj’ is back then we’ll have to see where we go with that one,” said Redknapp.
“He’s a good player and we didn’t want to lose him. But we just needed to balance the books with him going and Defoe coming.”
