Despite having signed for Everton nearly a year ago, Henry Onyekuru still finds himself currently unable to play for the club.
The winger made the move to Goodison Park from KAS Eupen last summer, but was instantly loaned out to Anderlecht for the entire 2017/18 campaign as he was not able to get a work permit to play in the Premier League.
And those issues are still around today.
Any player who is over 16-years-old and not from the European Economic Area requires a work permit to play for a British club.
In 2015 the FA changed the work permit criteria making it more difficult for non EEA (European Economic Area) players to sign for Premier League clubs unless they were “internationally established at the highest level”.
However, players from the Commonwealth with at least one grandparent who was born in the UK do not have to apply for a work permit through the points based system - they use a different method.
But, it's the points one we're concerned with today.
Firstly, a player can secure a work permit through playing the required number of competitive international matches for their country in the two years before the application was made.
The exact figure on this varies given where the player's home country stand in FIFA's official rankings - with a player sometimes only needing to appear in 30% of international games.
For Onyekuru and Nigeria, that's not the case.
To qualify for a work permit at this stage, the winger would have needed to appear in 75% of Nigeria's competitive fixtures over the last two years, given their FIFA World ranking of 47.
Onyekuru has only ever made two appearances for Nigeria, which falls way short of the required amount to secure a UK work permit.
There is a second stage to the process, which sees applications taken to an 'Exceptions panel' made up of three members appointed by the FA.
They make their decisions via two sets of objective criteria, 'Part A' and 'Part B', which allocate points to a player if they fall into certain categories regarding transfer fees and wages.
The first part relates to the finances of the deal in fee and wages.
For example, if the transfer fee paid for Onyekuru is inside the top 25% of all transfers to Premier League clubs in the previous season, then a player is awarded three points.
If a player fails to reach the required amount of points in 'Part A', then 'Part B' is brought into use, which go into further financial requirements and minutes played for their club and at international level.
t certainly is a complicated process.
If a player then reaches the required amount of points for either 'Part A' or 'Part B', the exceptions panel will then conduct a subjective review of the information available to justify whether a work permit should be awarded.
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