Work Permit frustration

I'm playing with Sunderland, who signed Christian Riveros on a free transfer in the 2010-11 season. He was on a 3-year contract set to expire in 2013. I'm now at the beginning of my 2012-13 campaign, and when I try to renew the contract, he fails his work permit in England.

Highly frustrating because this is a player who's been playing quite regularly for me last season. Humbug!

Anyone got any ideas as to why he's failing his work permit, or whether there's anything I can do to keep him rather than allow him to leave on a free transfer?

loan him out to belgium or bulgaria for a couple of years so he gets citizenship

He's 30 years old now.
By the time he comes back, I sould be offering him a job as a coach or scout or something.

Anyway, my question is more about how the work permit thing works. As far as I know, you get a work permit if you play in 90% of your country's last 10 games or something, but I don't know if he's going to be selected for the national squad or not.

Also, for someone who has already been working in England for the last few years and been a regular first-team player, shouldn't it theoretically be easier to get an extension of the current work permit?

My guess is that work permits aren't permanent but limited in time so that it has to be reviewed after some years. When he doesn't meet the requirements anymore the work permit can be revoked.

This is not at all uncommon in FM. Players who start the game on work permits, but whose permits expire before they become naturalised citizens often get refused extensions in-game. After three or so seasons, do a search of free agents, and you'll find a shed-load of players who have been regulars for their clubs, are a year or so from getting citizenship, but end up on the in-game scrapheap.

Depending on your views on editors, you could get around it by extending the contracts of all such players to such a time as they will become British citizens?

well the only bad thing about English leagues is work permits,of course you have two solutions:
1.Play fair and try to make team with euro players
2.Use editor to edit players nationality.

I mean,using editors for this thing is not cheating,we are not guilty for stupid English rules.
I love playing with Barnet but this work permit thing is really going on my nerves.

I'm not English, so I don't know how it works. I would feel considerably less "guilty" of using an editor if someone familiar with the concept could tell me how likely is it in real life that someone who has got a work permit previously and plays regularly for his club would get a work permit extension?

# Gurdit : I'm playing with Sunderland, who signed Christian Riveros on a free transfer in the 2010-11 season. He was on a 3-year contract set to expire in 2013. I'm now at the beginning of my 2012-13 campaign, and when I try to renew the contract, he fails his work permit in England.

Highly frustrating because this is a player who's been playing quite regularly for me last season. Humbug!

Anyone got any ideas as to why he's failing his work permit, or whether there's anything I can do to keep him rather than allow him to leave on a free transfer?

has he been dropped from paraguay national squad? also what squad status are you setting him under? sometimes it helps if they have a stronger squad status. he was useless for me at sunderland, sold him to a french team asap.

No, he's still in the Paraguay squad. And he's been set to "Important first team player" status.

I'll set him to "Key player" and try again.