Manchester United's pursuit of Jadon Sancho has ended in failure as the transfer window closed on Monday without the club being able to reach an agreement with Dortmund over a fee for the star.
It is no secret that Sancho has been Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's No.1 target for some time, and the Norwegian manager repeatedly pressured executive vice chairman Ed Woodward to get the deal done.
But Dortmund held firm over their £108m valuation of the player, and in the end United never really even got close to making a bid deemed suitable.
The German club actually set a deadline of August 10 for United to sign the player, with their sporting director Michael Zorc insistent that any offers after that date would be rejected.
This was allegedly not taken seriously by United, however, and according to The Athletic an incident on the day of the deadline summed up their complacency.
They claim that Zorc was standing on the training pitches on August 10 and claimed the decision to keep Sancho until next summer at the earliest was "final".
This led to one worried United director making a panicked phone call to Dortmund, to which they responded with something along the lines of: "What did you expect? You knew the terms."
Zorc always maintained Sancho was going nowhere publicly as well as privately ever since that day, saying as recently as the weekend: “Jadon Sancho is our player and he's got a long-term contract with us.
"We had clear agreements with him that he could make a transfer under certain circumstances, up to a certain point in time. And then the door is closed."
United clearly did not believe him, however, and felt confident that Dortmund would blink at the very last moment and sell their prize asset.
This did not come to pass, however, and in the end United were left scrambling to complete last minute deals for Edinson Cavani, Alex Telles and Facundo Pellistri.
It remains to be seen if they will come in for Sancho again next summer, but by that time the ship may well have sailed, with the likes of Liverpool and others tipped to make a move if the winger produces another stellar season in the Bundesliga.
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