Leeds United owner Andrea Radrizzani laid the blame at Swansea City's door for the 11th hour collapse of Daniel James's move to Elland Road.
A move for the 21-year-old appeared to be progressing without any issues on deadline day, as the player completed a medical at Thorp Arch before arriving at Elland Road at 6.30pm.
The trail then went cold, amid reports the Welsh side broke off communication, leaving James and Leeds United in limbo as the final hours of the window ticked down.
No move had been confirmed by the 11pm deadline and Radrizzani took to Twitter to express his disappointment at not being able to land the club's top target this month.
"I am very disappointed like all of @LUFC fans, we did all we could and accepted all requests," he explained.
"But you always need two parties to agree to make a deal and we always had one single target player, none else. We move on and keep fighting in our next 17 finals."
Radrizzani then added he would have signed him at the start of the January window if he could have, when pressed by a fans as to why the club have left the move so late in the window.
James had emerged as the Whites' chief target, with Marcelo Bielsa admitting in a press conference at that time his arrival would be a 'significant transfer'.
Swansea, who also pulled the plug on Leroy Fer's proposed move to Aston Villa, did not want to see their player go and pulled the plug at the last minute after Leeds are believed to have agreed an initial loan fee followed by a £5m payment to make the move permanent if they were to win promotion at the end of the season.
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