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It will take some time in the next few weeks for this top ten of the worst Premier League signings of all time in the January transfer window to break through.
We have A worst transfer per club here.
10) Chris Samba (QPR – £12.5m, 2013)
Samba would have been much higher on the list if QPR hadn’t somehow managed to convince Anzi Makhachkala to pay £12m to re-sign the central defender six months later. do it Funny how these two clubs ended up in a financial cluster***, isn’t it? A real puzzle.
The QPR manager at the time was of course Harry Redknapp. He called Samba ‘a monster’ and spoke of his ability to keep QPR defensively strong and thus steer the club away from relegation trouble. He made 10 appearances for QPR, conceding 19 times, failing to keep a clean sheet on his debut and apologizing to supporters for his performance in the 3-2 defeat to Fulham. QPR were relegated and Samba were on their way.
9) Kostas Mitroglou (Fulham – £13m, 2014)
The Premier League hasn’t seen Mitroglou at his best. The Premier League hasn’t seen much of Mitroglou. A player formerly known as ‘Mitrogoals’ for his scoring record would have been better named. Favorite nickname of teammate Steve Sidwell: “This thing.”
After scoring 41 times in 92 league games for the Olympiakos side that had made their debut in the Greek league, Fulham spent £13m – a club record fee at the time – to bring Mitroglou to England and save him from relegation. He would start one league game between his arrival in May and Fulham’s relegation, playing 151 minutes in total.
By August, Mitroglou had returned to Olympiacos on loan and scored the winner against Atletico Madrid in the Champions League the following month. The following night, Fulham lost 5–3 at Nottingham Forest at a time when losing to Nottingham Forest was far more embarrassing than it is now. Supporters must have wondered what on earth had happened.
8) Jean Macon (Aston Villa – £6m, 2011)
No list of transfer decisions is complete without Aston Villa. They form the January transfer idiocy trifecta with QPR and West Ham.
Macon arrived from Lyon as a highly rated midfielder. He was 27 years old and had played 36 times in the Champions League in the previous six seasons. He started the competition against Real Madrid, Liverpool, Manchester United and Milan.
“He is an experienced player. He is a suitable link between the midfield and the strikers,” said manager Gerard Houllier. “He has played in the Champions League. He will be a good asset for the future.”
McConnell looked sloppy on his debut, receiving a straight red card a fortnight later for a terrible tackle and making just five league appearances before the end of the season. He never played for Villa again, and still left on a permanent deal in July 2013.
7) Afonso Alves (Middlesbrough – £12.7m, 2008)
Ah Afonso, the striker will now forever be held up as an example of why you should be careful when buying a striker from the Eredivisie. As with Samba, the Brazilian would have threatened the top three but for a significant and inexplicable return on transfer costs. In this instance, Middlesbrough somehow persuaded Qatar’s Al Sadd to part with £7m for him.
Quiz Question: Has any player scored as few Premier League goals as Elvis (10) and still had a hat-trick? Answer: A few actuallyYes, Alois scored a shock 8-1 final-day victory over Manchester City, but he also scored two of his 13 goals for Boro against non-league Barrow in the FA Cup. Again, what on earth was al-Saad playing at?
6) Fernando Torres (Chelsea – £50m, 2011)
Real cheeky Nandu. The biggest crime of Chelsea’s ridiculous £50m purchase was that Torres was already on his way at the time of the signing. After scoring 18 goals in 22 games for Liverpool during an injury-hit 2009/10, Torres managed just nine in 23 games before the end of the January transfer window and generally looked frustrated at Anfield.
Forty-five goals in 172 matches was not a terrible record for Chelsea, although clearly well short of the expectations of the British record transfer purchase. Torres also had the grace of scoring important goals and providing key assists in Chelsea’s victories in the Champions League and Europa League. Still, we miss most, even if Gary Neville doesn’t.
And there’s really no question of the fact that 20 Premier League goals weren’t what Chelsea had in mind when shelling out such a hefty fee. Maybe 20 goals for the rest of the 2010/11 season, but not all.
5) Guido Carrillo (Southampton – £19.2m, 2018)
There seemed to be little logic in Southampton’s move to Monaco for a club-record £19.2 million for their fourth-choice forward in January 2018, beyond the forlorn hope that some Kylian Mbappe would end Guido Carrillo. had done
It wasn’t. Signed as a show of confidence in manager Mauricio Pellegrino, Carrillo played eight times under the manager before being sacked in mid-March. Substitute Mark Hughes surprisingly didn’t have the same level of faith in the Argentine striker, who played just twice more in his first half-season.
Nothing had changed by the summer and so Carrillo was loaned out to Leganes – the club Pellegrino took over after he left the south coast. The loan was renewed a year later and they were relegated to La Liga in 2020 by complete agreement. Carrillo played his first match for Southampton on 27 January 2018 and his last match on 31 March 2018, failing to score and eventually being withdrawn. Permanently free after two and a half years.
4) Jean-Alain Bomsong (Newcastle – £8m, 2005)
This is an excellent example of Newcastle-style long-term planning. In the summer of 2004, Boumsong was available on a free transfer and eventually joined Rangers. Four months later, Newcastle paid £8m to sign a central defender for whom there was no one else and who Newcastle themselves had shown no interest in signing on a free. Even if Boumsong was effective as a defender, it would be a cockup.
He was not useful. Indeed, the transfer was one of the deals raised by the Stevens inquiry as potentially suspect, contradicting evidence given by manager Graeme Souness and Freddie Shepherd. The inquiry ultimately decided that neither the parties, nor the purported football agent Willie McKay, had a case to answer. It always results when you manage to avoid awkward questions because people are perfectly willing to accept you are just so incompetent.
3) Andy Carroll (Liverpool – £35m, 2011)
If you didn’t want to. Andy Carroll will sign for Chelsea in the January transfer window of 2018 for £20m.then you are either a) a Chelsea supporter or b) someone who doesn’t believe in entertainment. Unfortunately, any hope of an entirely jokey deal was dashed by another injury. This resulted in the Blues moving from Ashley Barnes to Olivier Giroud. Peas in a pod.
Still, we’ll always have the Liverpool contract. In 40 years, the men will gather their grandchildren and tell them the old story of the inexperienced giant who led a record transfer to one of the greatest clubs in the land for a time.
Luis Suarez, signed earlier that day, thought he had arrived in England to play with Torres. Instead he was forced to lead Liverpool’s attack himself while Carroll stumbled and scored six goals in 44 league games before being sold for less than half the initial fee.
2) Alexis Sanchez (Manchester United – Swap, 2018) and Henrik Mekhtarian (Arsenal – Swap, 2018)
Swap deals and partial swaps used to be all the rage in gossip columns and speculation circles, but such fabricated stories no longer see the light of day. A real theory: It’s because Alexis Sanchez and Henrikh Mkhitaryan accidentally happened to actually happen and shed light on why they never actually had that much before.
The sheer horror endured by all parties involved in the transition is hard to fathom. Neither player relished the new environment. Neither club benefited. Both managers who approved the deal left by the end of the year, with Jose Mourinho being pushed out by Manchester United while Arsene Wenger jumped ship from Arsenal. Fans had almost nothing to celebrate other than the announcement video of Sanchez playing the piano and Mkhitaryan’s assist-filled debut.
Manchester United racked up a ridiculous wage bill for five goals in 45 games before anyone imagined helping to shift the burden. Arsenal at least avoided that infamy – Mkhitaryan was almost fine and earned very little. But both players eventually left on free transfers for a reason, so the exchange was cursed.
1) Savio Nsereko (West Ham – £9m, 2009)
Just a very sad story. After selling Craig Bellamy to Manchester City for £14m, West Ham reinvested much of the money in Savio, a German striker from Serie B side Brescia. Nesriko had three career league goals, all in the second tier.
Savio played ten league games for West Ham but started just one match and never scored. Not only was his shooting poor, but his physical presence was that of a dormouse. West Ham sold him to Fiorentina for just £3m less than seven months after signing him, losing £1m a month on initial costs.
From then on, Savio rapidly declined. He went through lower league clubs in Germany and Italy before moves to Kazakhstan, Bulgaria and Lithuania. There was also an arrest in Thailand for falsely accusing him of his own kidnapping, and reports of mental health problems along the way.
“I made a lot of mistakes. In fact, I made everything wrong that I could,” he told Bild in 2013, but a decade later, his career is still not back on track. 1860 After all the promise of his young career in Munich, only sadness and regret remain.
