Similar thing happened with Alan Smith when he went to United as I recall (the Leeds meff, not the lanky Arsenal personality vacuum).

Our "eleventh hour bid" "threatened to derail the move" despite no one taking it seriously, it being an open secret we had no money and zero indication that Smith wanted to move to us. Just baffling as to why we bothered, can only imagine Leeds gave us some kind of incentive to try and drive the price up a bit.