Blackburn Rovers director of football Gregg Broughton has taken responsibility for the failure to get Lewis O'Brien's loan move from Nottingham Forest over the line.
O'Brien was set to join Rovers on deadline day after a loan deal with a £10m option to buy the player upon a potential promotion was agreed between the two clubs. But the transfer deadline day saga has ended in a nightmare for Rovers, who thought they had beaten Sheffield United and West Brom to the signing of the Forest ace.
In order for a deal to go through, the relevant paperwork must be submitted by the 11pm deadline, which the EFL did not approve. Speaking to Rovers' media channel, Broughton laid out a detailed timeline of the night's events, before then admitting the fault ultimately lies with him.
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Via Lancs Live, he said: "Going into transfer deadline day we had a couple of live targets, we knew that Lewis would become available. We had been speaking to Nottingham Forest and his agent for probably six weeks coming into it. The message was consistent: Lewis can come out but not until we have brought somebody in.
"We knew that was gaining momentum in the 72 hours before (deadline day) and we finally got the call at 10am on transfer deadline day that Lewis would become available. We weren't able to speak to him straight away because he was in training with Nottingham Forest and by the time he had finished, spoke to his agent and asked for an hour to reflect, we got the message about 1.30/2pm that he would like to come to Blackburn. We finally got the sign off from Nottingham Forest a little bit after that.
"At the same time we are dealing with a striker who we were still waiting on the club to make a decision on so those two things are live. And then finally Ethan Brierley from Rochdale, a player we have tracked for some time but understood was going to Sheffield United, but because of the embargo in place wasn't able to so we decided to move quickly to try and secure Ethan. Those were the various bits.
"After that we just followed the process the club has always followed. I went to the medicals, which were in Manchester just because we knew time was going to be tight and I wanted to be there to make sure everyone was okay with the players. Lewis had only just been told by Nottingham Forest so we wanted to make sure he was okay and had had some food and all the stuff you need to do. Ethan left Manchester about 8.30pm and I left about 9.20pm with Lewis and his representatives to come back and get the paperwork done.
"There is definitely some internal factors and we must not gloss over that but there were some external factors. We are in the middle of an appeal process now. I am not a lawyer and we have the very best people working on our case and I hope you can understand why we can't go into those external factors now.
"They are not spurious or ridiculous otherwise we wouldn't be wasting time and energy on an appeal. There is something genuine on that but equally we and I are not trying to shirk responsibility. I am responsible for all football matters at the club and transfers and recruitment is one of the areas I look after. And we failed to get Lewis across the line so I take responsibility for that."
O'Brien now finds himself in an unfortunate situation where he will now be unable to play competitive football for six months. Forest have left him out of their 25-man squad for the remainder of the Premier League season and while an appeal has been submitted in an attempt to force through his move to Ewood Park, Broughton is less than confident that it will be successful.
He said: "To be honest, not very. Not because I don't think we have really good reasons because I think we do but my understanding is nobody has ever won an appeal against a late submission to the Football League so we are going to have set a record to do it this time around.
"Submitting the documentation is just part of the process but overall the buck stops with me. We mustn't blame the owners, the recruitment team or the admin and legal team at the club. The buck stops with me."
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