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It has been well over a month since Galatasaray's interest in signing Ederson from Manchester City first emerged, but as the clock ticks ever louder towards deadline day, the deal remains unresolved.
Considering it looks like one of the simpler transfers, it is perplexing that it has dragged on so long. The 32-year-old has a year left on his contract, and Turkish tax laws will make personal teams relatively straightforward.
City will want a decent fee for a goalkeeper who has shown his class in 372 appearances for the club, but Ederson's age and contract status usually indicate a fairly simple transfer. But that hasn't been the case.
There has been plenty of noise around Ederson's future, particularly from Turkey, but the Brazilian remains a City player and was on the bench in the weekend's defeat to Tottenham.
He could even be in the team to face Brighton on Sunday. After all, Pep Guardiola has spent all summer insisting he remains the club's No. 1, despite the £27million deal to sign James Trafford and the likelihood that Ederson will leave the Etihad at some point.
Galatasaray have spoken to City about Ederson, but the delay in doing a deal seems unusual. It's hard to see how the two clubs can be that far apart in valuation, and when any potential transfer is announced, the Turkish giants will have to declare the fee and wages anyway.
Should Ederson make that switch, then City are likely to move for 26-year-old Gianluigi Donnarumma. Donnarumma is expected to leave Paris Saint-Germain after being ostracised by Luis Enrique. But at the moment, neither deal is ready to go.
That could still present City with a problem, especially with Stefan Ortega still at the club. The German was expected to leave after academy graduate Trafford returned to the club, but no move has yet materialised.
That leaves City with four first-choice goalkeepers on their books at the moment, a less-than-ideal situation given Pep Guardiola's complaints about the size of his squad. Ortega is still likely to move on before Monday's 7pm deadline.
But that deadline could yet complicate the deals surrounding Ederson and Donnarumma. If Guardiola and football director Hugo Viana are desperate to take advantage of Donnarumma's dethroning in Paris, then he has to be signed by the evening of September 1.
The Turkish Super Lig transfer window doesn't close until September 11, however. That gives Galatasaray plenty more time to seal a move for Ederson, having explored their goalkeeping options and also considered a move for Diogo Costa of Porto.
Would City push ahead with the signing of Donnarumma and then hope Ederson goes to Turkey in the 10 days between the UK transfer window closing and the Turkish window shutting? It would be a risk, but they might yet have no option.
Taking transfers down to the wire is unusual at the Etihad, but it is shaping up to be a chaotic end to the summer at City, and the goalkeepers could yet define it.
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