Leeds United heads left spinning but one transfer u-turn was not an option for Elland Road chiefs

Cody Gakpo and PSV set the trend, and the tone for deadline day, by sending Victor Orta back to England without the outcome he and the Whites felt was at least a possibility when he jetted off to Holland last Wednesday.

A director of football just does not make that journey without, at the very least, hearing encouraging noises from the player's camp, and PSV would not have 'received' him, as they put it, without at least being open to the idea of a sale. And Leeds believed there was a deal to be done, until a complete about face in the wee hours of Thursday morning.

Bamba Dieng, his advisors and Marseille pulling the same trick after a deal was actually done must have induced nauseating vertigo in the offices at Elland Road, not least because Andrea Radrizzani had counted his chicken before it had been delivered to Yeadon, never mind hatched.

The last little twist of irony in the Dieng saga, one you just could not make up, was his move to Nice breaking down on the back of medical tests and forcing him into an involuntary u-turn.

Jesse Marsch, his head surely still spinning, then had to suffer the sight of Robert Jones having his course of direction changed, to Leeds' detriment, by a VAR who made no attempt to change the referee's mind on a later incident that would have played in the Whites' favour.

The u-turn that has become the big story, though, is the one Marsch himself has made, for whatever reason and with whatever motivation, on why Daniel James had to leave on deadline day.

A midweek attempt to walk back his post-game suggestion of an unavoidable one-in, one-out arrangement and his own lament that James should have had to depart a club where he was content, was about as well received in West Yorkshire as Radrizzani's Dieng Tweet. Both were arguably as clumsy as each other.

But regardless of the reasons behind the decisions to allow James' all-but-done loan deal with Fulham, a screeching 11th-hour u-turn from Leeds would have burned more than rubber.

Of course it will be a terrible look for Leeds should they run into injury trouble with their wingers yet red buttoning Fulham's calls and dragging James back up north would have been a car crash.

This is the player whose aborted deadline day move from Swansea to Leeds brought Victor Orta to tears.

The pair shared a sombre hug before James trudged out the door at Elland Road. How willing a participant would James have been in a welcome-back embrace that followed just hours after his latest Leeds-sanctioned LS11 exit?

This is the player whose bitter 2019 deadline day disappointment came down to what Angus Kinnear called 'internal boardroom politics' at Swansea. What words could the CEO have justified had Leeds pulled the same stunt, on the same player?

This is a player Marsch insists he likes and one whose departure was a difficult decision but how easy would it have been to reintroduce him to the first team plans and a dressing room where writing that had been on the wall all week had been hastily scrubbed off?

It does not really matter, at this stage, whose handwriting it was in because the ending to this story for Leeds and James has not yet been written. It only matters that James was told he was expendable for Leeds United and convincing a player that you didn't really mean what you said just a few hours earlier, when saying the complete opposite, would be a hard task even for a man as passionate as Orta, one as eloquent as Kinnear and one as effusive as Marsch.

It would be an even harder task for a player in such a scenario, one with a very young family to boot, to fend off very natural feelings of bitterness and put on a happy face to protect the dressing room atmosphere.

Once Leeds had set off down that road, there could be no turning back. Not with trust, that oh-so-valuable glue that binds a club's hierarchy and its player, intact.

So whether you believe it was a one-in, one-out situation or a footballing decision - a penny for the winger's thoughts on this - is really by the by.

Having made the £25m move from Manchester United and been sold an idea very different to the pig of a debut campaign he experienced, James worked himself into the ground to try and keep Leeds in the Premier League, playing wherever he was asked, even when that out-of-position requirement was harming him in the court of public opinion. Struggles with end product denied him fan favourite status but he did his bit. Supporters recognised that.

So when James, yet again, found himself in the offices of a football stadium on the evening of deadline day having passed a medical and posed for pictures with his new shirt, waiting for a phone call to say he could sign, the only moral decision for Leeds was to keep the wheels turning on a course they set for themselves. The only thing left now is to hope the destination is agreeable.