Your clubs worst transfers

[TheGrandAvatar]

54 minutes ago, Lineker said:

I'm now uber-nostalgic for this thread: 

 

This is going to make me go back to watch Nick Hancock's Footballing Nightmares on YouTube now. 

 

 

[Gazz]

It's been proven today that former Newcastle defender Chancel Mbemba is 34, not 28 as he claims.

Chuck him on the pile too.

[King Ellis]

Seth Johnson is one of the more highlighted examples of the excess we were living in in the early 00's, with that story of Risdale misreading Johnson/his agent's reactions to his offer of whatever sum it was and immediately jumping up another 10k. Plus there's the whole loan army situation in our dying Prem years, the likes of Raul Bravo, Roque Junior (Or Rocky Biscuit as one call in contributor put it at the time) or Cyril Chapuis, who I think I saw actually play in one of the early League Cup rounds and I wouldn't be surprised if that was his only outing that year.

But I think in sheer terms of over promising, under delivering, it would have to be Tomas Brolin. Slightly before my time but I think there was a bit of buzz about him coming off the World Cup in 94, I'm not sure if his foot injury might have already been a factor at that point but it didn't work out with him and Wilko. Rumours of his ballooning weight resulting in his match shirt being fashioned out of a ships sail are unsubstantiated.

[FLiam]

Mustafi has to be up there too. £35m and one of the most expensive defenders ever at the time. Laughable.

[Szumi]

2 hours ago, stokeriño said:

My instinct is that it has to be Lukaku.

There are plenty of players who cost Chelsea a chunk of money and returned literally nothing, though most of those didn't cost much in the context of the club's budget at the time. Relative small fry like Djilobodgi etc.

Although £50m in 2011 was more significant than £100m in 2021, at least Torres stuck around and contributed to several trophies over the years.

£70m for Kepa was even more mind-boggling than Torres, given he's a GK, but he did do... some things... occasionally.

For Lukaku to be a record signing and then have mentally checked out a few months later, before heading out on a pittance loan deal? FFS.

Side-note: my pre-Abramovich choice is and always will be Chris fucking Sutton.

Fernando Torres should count as worth the money spent just for making Gary Neville orgasm on air

[The Lusophone]

59 minutes ago, ģå.żž said:

It's been proven today that former Newcastle defender Chancel Mbemba is 34, not 28 as he claims.

Chuck him on the pile too.

And as of 20 minutes ago, he's officially a Marseille player.

[Hobo]

There's arguments for the likes of Benteke, Balotelli, Aquilani, Andy Carroll, Iago Aspas, Fabio Borini and Robbie Keane.

But for some reason I feel more forgiving of some of those. I think (most) of them at least tried at certain times.

Andriy Voronin though. He was awful.

[TheGrandAvatar]

8 minutes ago, Hobo said:

There's arguments for the likes of Benteke, Balotelli, Aquilani, Andy Carroll, Iago Aspas, Fabio Borini and Robbie Keane.

But for some reason I feel more forgiving of some of those. I think (most) of them at least tried at certain times.

Andriy Voronin though. He was awful.

Would you add Craig Bellamy to that list? I never understood why he left Blackburn to join Liverpool and then end up at West Ham and then City before ending his playing days at Cardiff.

His move to Liverpool while possibly something he wanted so he could play at a bigger level. He might have been more suited staying at Blackburn another season or two to get more game time to become an even better player. Loved Bellamy early in his career. Really solid player. Could have been a lot more. 

Chelsea would be Shevchenko. Such a loss that his potential did not get a chance to show in the Premier League. 

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

Before this season it would have been difficult to pick, but Lukaku's taken it upon himself to just dig himself out of his hole with a spade.

He's now given an interview with Football Italia saying his transfer to Chelsea was a mistake. YOU'RE STILL CONTRACTED TO THEM YOU CRETIN.

[Szumi]

2 hours ago, Hobo said:

There's arguments for the likes of Benteke, Balotelli, Aquilani, Andy Carroll, Iago Aspas, Fabio Borini and Robbie Keane.

But for some reason I feel more forgiving of some of those. I think (most) of them at least tried at certain times.

Andriy Voronin though. He was awful.

Carroll, Aquilani, and Markovic we're the ones I was going to add to the Liverpool list. Markovic was one of the worst players I ever saw play for us I think! 

At least with some of the flops we either recouped most of our money back (Benteke, Borini), or at least a decent fee (Carroll, Keane). Slimmest of silver linings!

[hugobomb]

For Birmingham my choice is usually Nikola Zigic. While we've had worse players, none of them cost £6 Million. He was unplayable on his day (the League Cup final being one of them) but that day didn't come round very often and he spent three years in the Championship looking very ordinary for someone on around £50,000 a week.

[Hobo]

13 hours ago, TheGrandAvatar said:

Would you add Craig Bellamy to that list? I never understood why he left Blackburn to join Liverpool and then end up at West Ham and then City before ending his playing days at Cardiff.

His move to Liverpool while possibly something he wanted so he could play at a bigger level. He might have been more suited staying at Blackburn another season or two to get more game time to become an even better player. Loved Bellamy early in his career. Really solid player. Could have been a lot more.

I wouldn't personally. Its a weird one where he had two single seasons at Liverpool separated by stints elsewhere. But he didn't do too badly either time.

I completely forgot about Joe Cole. He was massively underwhelming.

[Szumi]

2 hours ago, Hobo said:

I wouldn't personally. Its a weird one where he had two single seasons at Liverpool separated by stints elsewhere. But he didn't do too badly either time.

I completely forgot about Joe Cole. He was massively underwhelming.

That hurt me so much. I LOVED Joe Cole. I was so excited when he signed with us. When I would play FIFA but wasn't really into Liverpool yet, I played with Chelsea a few times and just loved using him. He was my guy. Sadly, he fell apart even quicker than Sturridge did!

[Cymbols]

Good question this. We’ve had some shit signings come in at Villa, but fortunately, a lot of them didn’t cost all that much so you can write them off as getting what we paid for.

That being said, going back a time, Stan Collymore was an expensive mistake. More recently, signing Rudy Gestede for £7m to replace Christian Benteke was a disaster which led to relegation.

Down in the Championship, spending absurd money on strikers who were never likely to be Premier League level was a major error. £12m Ross McCormack and £12m Scott Hogan both stand out as dismal pieces of business. 

Back to the top flight and, while he is a victim of circumstance, Wesley will make this list in future. £22m, just as he’s starting to find his feet Ben Mee puts him out for 500 days with a ruined knee, and now struggling to make an impact in a succession of loan moves. He will either leave for a cut price fee, his contract will run down, or he’ll get bought out by the club, but it won’t work out for him now I think.
 

[Hobo]

17 minutes ago, Szumi - A Polack said:

That hurt me so much. I LOVED Joe Cole. I was so excited when he signed with us. When I would play FIFA but wasn't really into Liverpool yet, I played with Chelsea a few times and just loved using him. He was my guy. Sadly, he fell apart even quicker than Sturridge did!

the timing on Joe Cole's signing was such that it felt like a big deal and good news. That summer Liverpool also signed Christian Poulsen, Milan Jovanovic, the aforementioned Paul Konchesky and Brad Jones. Brand Jones might be the worst goalkeeping signing Liverpool have ever made? He didn't play much but he was generally awful when he did. The section in his wiki about his brief spell at Shelbourne in the League of Ireland is amazing.
 

Quote

He had loan spells at several clubs; in the 2001–02 season he played four games for Irish club side Shelbourne. He made his professional and League of Ireland debut on 5 October against local rivals Bohemians at Dalymount Park and conceded 4 goals in a 6–4 victory one of which was direct from his own goal kick.

The 2010 summer was not great for Liverpool at all. Rafa out, Hodgson in. Fabio Aurelio, the club's only senior left back, being released and re-signed.

I guess, Raul Meireles, was the standout new signing alongside youth prospectrs Danny Wilson and Jonjo Shelvey.  Which really isn't much to write home about.

 

[Naitch]

19 hours ago, stokeriño said:

My instinct is that it has to be Lukaku.

There are plenty of players who cost Chelsea a chunk of money and returned literally nothing, though most of those didn't cost much in the context of the club's budget at the time. Relative small fry like Djilobodgi etc.

Although £50m in 2011 was more significant than £100m in 2021, at least Torres stuck around and contributed to several trophies over the years.

£70m for Kepa was even more mind-boggling than Torres, given he's a GK, but he did do... some things... occasionally.

For Lukaku to be a record signing and then have mentally checked out a few months later, before heading out on a pittance loan deal? FFS.

Side-note: my pre-Abramovich choice is and always will be Chris fucking Sutton.

Lukaku surely has to be the new benchmark for all-time worst-ever signing.

Winston Bogarde, Pierluigi Casiraghi and Robert Fleck can also be added to the pre-Abramovich list. In fact, Sutton, Fleck, and Casiraghi show that Chelsea's striker problem is much more of a long-term issue. Hasselbaink, Drogba, and Costa seem to be more the exceptions than the standard.

[Adam]

Harsh on Brad Jones that, he was signed by Liverpool as a back-up goalkeeper and that brief Shelbourne spell was his first senior football, when he was a teenager.

[Kaney]

21 hours ago, FLiam said:

Kaba Diawara was pretty awful.

Then there is Park-Chu-Young, Francis Jeffers and several others. 

Nicolas Pepe in hindsight was a very bad transfer, purely because of the agent fees involved driving the price up so high.

I feel bad for Pepe cos he clearly has talent and has never made a stink, just got his head down and got on with it. The price tag put pressure on him and he couldn't deal with it, but I still like him and hope he does well elsewhere.

Staying in the recent era though, Willian has to be my pick. Lichsteiner, Lucas Perez, Toreirra etc all been a waste of money but haven't ever really been actively awful. Willian was garbage outside the first game and never seemed to get dropped. Not saying he is a reason for Pepe not kicking on, but I know 100% I'd rather he got the minutes Willian did most of that season. There have been loads of crap signings but him, and yeah Mustafi too, have been the most damaging in my opinion.

[9 to 5]

Corrado Grabbi, roughly 7m on a striker and at the time almost a record signing, that didn't score.

Barry Ferguson, was at the time our record signing, his heart wasn't in it, all hype and no product. Broke his leg and shipped back to Rangers.

Dwight Yorke, only there for a payday and helped his mate Andy Cole also go off the rails.

Myles Anderson, the Venky's agent's son. Enough said.

[Hobo]

1 hour ago, Adam said:

Harsh on Brad Jones that, he was signed by Liverpool as a back-up goalkeeper and that brief Shelbourne spell was his first senior football, when he was a teenager.

I just find the way it's written to be funny. They didn't have to include the fact one of the goals was "direct from his own goal kick" but they did and it amuses me. It sounds like he had a nightmare of a game.

It's possibly harsh on him but at the same time he never really felt like a credible back up choice at Liverpool. He was just a guy who hung on in there while other reserve keepers cycled in and out. He's got that little spell where Reina and Doni are both suspended and he saves a penalty in he FA Cup. But he's also got losing at Northampton in the League Cup and a disasterous performance in the league against Man Utd in what I think was his last season.

He always felt like a cheap signing to me that just kinda hung around because someone had to be reserve goalie and Brad Jones wasn't either on the verge of retirement or a a young keeper that anyone had any interest in taking on loan.