St Johnstone manager Tommy Wright has claimed that differing deadline dates in Scotland and England could cost him a new player.
While the transfer window slams shut north of the border on Saturday the final day of August it remains open down south until Monday night.
Saints want to make a loan deal with an English club but the man in question is needed by his current team for a fixture this weekend.
That makes it highly unlikely that anything can be done and Wright hit out at the date discrepancy.
“The transfer deadline ending on Saturday is a nonsense,” he said. “I am speaking to a club down south about a player on loan but it looks like I’m going to miss out on him.
“They need him to play a game over the weekend then they were willing to let him go. But with our window closing on Saturday and being out of kilter with the English leagues, it probably won’t happen.
“Unless I can persuade them not to use him in the game then he won’t be coming.
“To me, it seems crazy to have a different deadline to down south because of the amount of players moving back and forward.
“Surely it’s not difficult to match up the two windows and for ours to close on Monday like they do in England?
“It will be frustrating if we do miss out on this player I want because of the deadlines being different.”
Wright, who turned 50 this week, has had a positive response from his players after they suffered a four-goal hammering from Dundee United last Saturday.
He is backing them to get it right when they head to Pittodrie to take on Aberdeen, the side managed by ex-McDiarmid gaffer Derek McInnes.
Wright said: “I felt we looked flat against United but the lads have come back in this week and have been flying.
“When we have had disappointments in the past we have always bounced back from them and that is what we’ll look to do this weekend.
“There has been no knee-jerk reaction. We lost 4-0 but it was just a bad day from us.
“And looking back at the game we still got into the last third of their pitch a lot. United made more use of the opportunities they had but we still had opportunities of our own.
“Aberdeen have had a good start to the season but lost to Hearts last weekend so they’ll be the same as us.
“We’ve both had decent starts to the season and it should be a cracking game. Derek knows a lot of our players and speaks very highly of them.
“He signed guys like Dave Mackay, Murray Davidson, Frazer Wright and Chris Millar but sometimes guys like playing against your old manager.”