Enzo Le Fée is the subject of considerable introspection at Roma. The concern at the Stadio Olimpico is that last month’s decision to offload the multitalented French midfielder with more than a hint of Luka Modric about his game, might prove a big mistake. Sunderland certainly exhibit zero sign of buyer’s remorse over an expensive loan deal obligated to turn into a formal £20m transfer should Régis Le Bris’s team return to the Premier League this spring.

“Le Fée is 100% quality,” says Gary Bennett, the former Sunderland defender turned BBC Radio Newcastle match analyst. “From what we’ve seen so far, wow. Twenty million will be money very well spent.”

The normally measured Le Bris is equally enthusiastic about a 25-year-old playmaker he first schooled in the art of drifting between the lines in Lorient’s youth team in their native Brittany. “We needed an X factor,” said a manager who also helped Le Fée overcome a troubled home life. “Enzo makes the difference. He has really good quality and is so versatile, so adaptable; he can be a No 6, a No 8, a No 10 or a winger. And Enzo coming to Sunderland is a good statement. It shows we are attractive, that this is a place to grow, to live big emotions, to improve.”

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Given that Le Bris believes, due partly to the need to play Le Fée in a less preferred left-wing position, he is only operating at “70 to 75% of his ability”, Leeds would be unwise to underestimate Sunderland when they arrive at Elland Road on Monday evening.

Daniel Farke’s Championship frontrunners are seven points clear of Le Bris’s fourth-placed team and Sunderland are anxious that the gap from not only Leeds but Sheffield United and Burnley too does not become a chasm.

The depth of the club’s desire to secure one of the two automatic promotion places explains why Sunderland’s owner, Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, and sporting director, Kristjaan Speakman, sanctioned a significant departure from their business model in order to capture a midfielder scouted extensively by Liverpool and Arsenal during a stint at Rennes before his £20m move to Roma last summer.

Unusually for Sunderland, Le Fée is not the typical development signing the Wearside club can acquire cheaply. If Speakman was proud of selling the winger Jack Clarke to Ipswich for £15m last summer, the hope is Le Fée will stick around and help establish Sunderland in the top tier.

In many ways the arrival of a former France Under-21s international regarded as unlucky to miss out on a place at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar signals the start of “phase two” of Speakman’s blueprint for eventual Premier League success. Should Sunderland be promoted, Le Fée’s presence could yet persuade the hugely gifted 19-year-old Jobe Bellingham to park his midfield talents on Wearside for another season as Europe’s elite clubs weigh up bids for a player who cost £1.5m when he joined from Birmingham two years ago.

With more than 150 Ligue Un appearances behind him, Le Fée brings invaluable experience to the Championship’s youngest squad, not to mention the maturity acquired during a challenging childhood in a small village outside Lorient. In many ways Le Bris, a former teacher with a string of impressive academic qualifications, became a surrogate parent to Le Fée, showing understanding when he sometimes skipped academy training to visit his father during two stints in prison. By the time tragedy struck when Le Fée Sr killed himself in 2021, Le Bris had been promoted to managing the Breton club’s first team and earned admiration for the way he helped his prodigy navigate his bereavement.

On the pitch Le Fée’s poise dictates that he has never collected a red card in a career that stalled unexpectedly during his handful of appearances in predominately defensive midfield roles in Italy. Not that his cause was exactly helped by struggling Roma sacking Daniele de Rossi and then Ivan Juric last autumn before persuading Claudio Ranieri to emerge from retirement and become their third head coach of the campaign.

Out of the Serie A chaos a man whose name translated literally from French means “creature with magical powers” has brought order to Sunderland’s midfield. Le Bris likes his team to play an often fluid, improvisational style big on positional rotation and overloads and based broadly on a framework of passing triangles. In Le Fée he now has a player skilled at joining the sometimes complex tactical dots.

It helps that the younger man is a playmaker like Modric and one capable of placing Wearside on the European map, who benefits from a low centre of gravity, is a willing defensive presser, has a nice line in through balls and is much stronger than his slight frame suggests.

It helps that he is also happy in his new habitat. “I’ve known Régis Le Bris a long time and when he called me in Rome I knew I wanted to join Sunderland,” says Le Fée. “I came here to find my football again. For me, it’s a perfect project. It’s a really big club, with a really nice training ground and a very young team I can help with my goals, my assists, my fight.”