United are stubborn to pay the extra money, leading to a stand-off which puts the whole transfer in doubt.
The Algerian regime, in a delicate political position, does not want to lose face in a stand-off which marks the return of major operations on its home turf.
Power and authority may be slipping from Mr Blair to Gordon Brown, but both men are locked in a stand-off which it is in neither's interest to break.Throughout the last two parliaments, the relationship between the two men was reported as if it were some nightmarish zero-sum game.
Kenyan authorities appear to have launched an assault on the Westgate shopping complex in Nairobi, in an attempt to end a stand-off which has lasted for three days.
That led to a lengthy stand-off, which only ended last month when the player and Levein put their differences behind them - too late, as it transpired, to save the manager.
After an awkward stand-off which saw the policeman glare at Bale as if he knew what was coming, Bale edged out once a gap appeared and attempted to drive on his way by turning left.
Of course, the cold war was also a classic military stand-off which ended when the Soviet block finally threw off communism.
Negotiations faltered as the two sides searched for a way to resolve to the stand-off, which echoes a dispute in January 2006.
Police arrived at 1.30AM and arrested six for their involvement in the violent stand-off, which started when a group of drunk people walking from a nearby house party became embroiled in an altercation with two non-religious Jewish men in the street.
Alastair Beach, a correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, was inside the Fath Mosque compound during much of the long stand-off, which he described on Twitter as a "siege".
Removes it so far as to make them positively sinister, if not actively inbred: there are pub-based stand-offs which make Straw Dogs look like Doc Martin.
