Leeds United Georginio Rutter transfer omerta leads to Jesse Marsch 'coming together' admission

With a flight booked and due to land in West Yorkshire around tea time, the Whites were just a medical away from landing a new circa £25m striker to help Marsch in his attempts to take the club into a fourth successive season of Premier League football, but you wouldn't have known it from Thursday's press conference.

Marsch made it clear even before January began that there would be no talk of signings in this window, not from him, which is, in all likelihood, part of a club-wide stance as they seek to avoid the kind of running commentary that left everyone so frustrated over the failed Charles De Ketelaere and Cody Gakpo pursuits.

It's impossible to ensure that memo is read and adhered to by everyone at the club, from the very top to the very bottom, but Marsch for one is sticking to it.

"The first thing is a reminder that I'm not speaking about transfers, so don't even bother," is how the naturally open and talkative American began his meeting with the media.

The only thing for it, then, is to talk about an inescapable subject – the football, which Marsch admits does not yet look as it should at Elland Road.

"I think there's a lot of individuals that have grown a lot throughout the process, but as a group it still hasn't come together the way that I would like and the lack of consistency from match to match and then in a match - what a first half and what a second half can look like or vice versa - it means that we're not able to really push this the way that I would want, so that we don't have to talk about the table.

"But, that's where we area and it's my job to figure out how to help the group improve in that way and that's what I'm constantly trying to do, is help create more and more clarity and understanding for what roles are and how to execute our matchday so that's ultimately what will be the goal again for Villa and to do it in a way where we can also hunt the result.

"Firstly, the two in 16, I would talk more about the last eight and I would say actually in the last eight then our balance is not bad and I think that we are, in a result way, moving in the right direction. For me, again, trying to get performances to continue to grow and add up to be more and more so that we can be closer to what we're trying to develop here is even more important and I feel like we're in a good place and we are poised to have a click or a spark happen that can launch us."

Process and results are football's chicken and egg. The thinking is resisting shortermism and focusing on a process leads to better longterm results, but without results in the shortterm how many managers get to see their process come to fruition?

Pep Guardiola recently called for Chelsea owner Todd Boehly to give Graham Potter time to turn things around at Stamford Bridge, because all managers need time.

Marsch has been at Leeds for 10 and a half months and whilst last April he spoke of never having had a group whose adaptation to his methods was so rapid, most recently he's talked about the need for better tactical understanding in order to control games and rely less on chaos.

Leeds have looked at their most dangerous when games get wild, though, with the fans up for it and players going for it, relentlessly. Too often, what it has taken to get to that point is adversity.

"Obviously, the last two matches, I think we have a little bit of a slower first half and a much more aggressive second half," said Marsch.

"And in general what you see with us is when our backs are against the wall that we look and we play freer and we play more aggressive and so I'm trying to get us to incorporate that mindset from the start and to believe that that in all phases of the game that we can be confident, we can be dominant and we can become the team that I know we can become.

"One of the things I've been saying to them lately is that I believe in them and sometimes I think I believe in them more than they maybe believe in themselves and so trying to continue to push them to show how good I know they can be. That will continually be an emphasis."

Marsch knows, though, that talk is cheap and this Leeds United he believes is possible have got to show themselves. He's got to get them there. Transfers, like Rutter, might help. Perhaps, in February, Marsch will talk about how.