Inferring generic types of nested static generic functions

Is the Java compiler able to infer the type of a generic static function from its context as the argument to another generic static function?

For example, I have a simple Pair class:

public class Pair<F, S> {

    private final F mFirst;

    private final S mSecond;

    public Pair(F first, S second) {
        mFirst  = checkNotNull(first);
        mSecond = checkNotNull(second);
    }

    public static <F, S, F1 extends F, S1 extends S> Pair<F, S> of(F1 first, S1 second) {
        return new Pair<F, S>(first, second);
    }

    public F first() {
        return mFirst;
    }

    public S second() {
        return mSecond;
    }

    // ...
}

And I have the following generic static function:

public static <F, P extends Pair<F, ?>> Function<P, F> deferredFirst() {
    return (Function<P, F>)DEFERRED_FIRST;
}

private static final Function<Pair<Object, ?>, Object> DEFERRED_FIRST = 
        new Function<Pair<Object,?>, Object>() {

    @Override
    public Object apply(Pair<Object, ?> input) {
        return input.first();
    }
};

Which I wish to use as follows (Collections2.transform is from Google Guava):

List<Pair<Integer, Double>> values = ...
Collection<Integer> firsts = Collections2.transform(values, 
        Pair.deferredFirst());

To which the compiler complains:

The method transform(Collection<F>, Function<? super F,T>) in the type 
Collections2 is not applicable for the arguments 
(List<Pair<Integer,Double>>, Function<Pair<Object,?>,Object>)

So it seems that the compiler fa