Manchester United legend and Leeds, Newcastle, Liverpool cult heroes still ahead of excellent Marmoush

Omar Marmoush should be happy with his return since joining Manchester City in January but a Manchester United legend is among the huge names ahead of him.

Marmoush has scored six Premier League goals since signing for £59m in January – three more than the closest winter additions this season, Aston Villa pair Marco Asensio and Donyell Malen.

Plenty of players in Premier League history can do better than that with seven or eight goals after joining in a mid-season transfer, but this lot are streets ahead and in Marmoush’s sights.

Winter signings to score nine Premier League goals that season

Jesse Lingard (West Ham, 2020/21)
The dystopian nightmare that was The Lockdown Season produced a few ludicrous Premier League events which would not have happened with fans present: Liverpool losing six games at home; Manchester United being awarded a penalty after full-time; Mikel Arteta remaining in employment.

But perhaps the most absurd were the scoring streaks of January loanees Jesse Lingard and Joe Willock, who had a panicking Gareth Southgate contemplating not picking 427 right-backs in his Euro 2021 squad.

Willock earned a permanent move to Newcastle from Arsenal that summer by scoring eight goals, seven of which came in consecutive appearances, while Lingard suddenly became one of the league’s most effective forwards when temporarily freed from those Manchester United shackles.

He never did recapture that magic in the Premier League.

Nikica Jelavic (Everton, 2011/12)
David Moyes once said his Everton side was “probably a centre-forward away from being contenders for the Premier League”, and for a time Jelavic showed enough to suggest he could fit the bill.

Despite joining from Rangers in late January and not making his debut until the following month, Jelavic finished as Everton’s top scorer with more than twice as many goals as his closest new teammate.

That form did not carry through – the Croatian scored 11 goals from February to May 2012, then 10 from that August to January 2014 – but for a time his finishing became Player of the Month award-worthy stuff of legend. Two goals in a ridiculous 4-4 draw at Old Trafford even eventually helped gift Manchester City the title.

Darren Bent (Aston Villa, 2010/11)
“I’d have expected a call from Villa’s manager,” said Steve Bruce. “I’d have expected Gerard Houllier to have had the decency to pick up the phone but that’s not been the case.”

“He has made transfers before,” Houllier replied. “I’m not culpable in any way. If he feels that, well, I feel sorry for that. I was kept informed, I assume he was kept informed.”

Knowing Sunderland around that time, a) probably not and b) Zlatan Ibrahimovic would have been on the shortlist to replace him.

The Black Cats were challenging for Europe and selling arguably their best player to a relegation candidate mid-season, so any frustration would have been understandable. And Bent starting in typically prolific fashion to fire Villa to a mid-table finish, a point and place above Sunderland, cannot have helped.

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Andy Cole (Blackburn, 2001/02)
The arrivals of Ruud van Nistelrooy and Juan Sebastian Veron meant Cole was largely marginalised for the final few months of a remarkably productive spell at Manchester United.

In part through fear of missing out on yet another England tournament squad, and also due to pressure from the Manchester United board to sell a player who had just turned 30, Cole was shipped off to a former Premier League title rival in recently promoted Blackburn.

Within a couple of months he scored the winner in the League Cup final to complete his personal set of trophies in England, carrying that form into an excellent Premier League season which dragged Rovers clear of relegation but still went ignored by England.

Robbie Keane (Leeds, 2000/01)
“Having signed Rio Ferdinand for £18m we felt it imprudent to spend another £12m immediately,” is a generational quote from Peter Ridsdale, considering fewer than three years later his response to the rhetorical question, “Should we have spent so heavily in the past?” was an almost apologetic “probably not” amid spiralling debts and intense pressure for him to resign.

Inter received their £12m months after Leeds made the presumably “prudent” decision to take him on loan first.

The Irishman had, to be fair, taken the Leeds from 10th upon his arrival to fourth and a place in the following season’s UEFA Cup with a phenomenal scoring streak. How unfortunate that he was ineligible for their run to the Champions League semi-final, arriving right at the apex of Ridsdale and friends “living the dream”. But that table from Keane’s arrival to the end of the season was mightily intoxicating.

Jurgen Klinsmann (Spurs, 1997/98)
Few players have had quite as significant an impact on the Premier League in as little time as Klinsmann at Spurs. Across two spells with a deeply troubled club the German scored 38 goals in 68 games and must have justifiably assumed he had locked down his place as the preeminent imported Jurgen K.

His exploits in the 1994/95 season saw him win over the country after being vilified for diving and ultimately being quite German, winning the FWA Footballer of the Year award and switching to Bayern Munich.

But a disappointing spell with Sampdoria was brought to an end when he terminated his contract in Italy and rocked up in north London as a 33-year-old free agent in 1998, pulling Spurs to safety with a glut of goals – including four and two assists in one game against Wimbledon – before retiring after that summer’s World Cup.

Guy Whittingham (Sheffield Wednesday, 1994/95)
One place and two points above the final four-team relegation zone before the switch to a 38-game season, Sheffield Wednesday were sufficiently panicked into action in December 1994. Their solution was to sign Whittingham, whose five goals in 26 Premier League games for Aston Villa hardly screamed ‘key to survival’.

Yet he matched that tally by March and almost doubled it come season’s end, pulling Wednesday into mid-table but creating expectations he could never really match in the top flight.

Winter signings to score 10 Premier League goals that season

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Arsenal, 2017/18)
Within 80 days of becoming the most expensive signing in Arsenal history, Aubameyang might have been shocked that the manager who tempted him to the Premier League would be stepping down at the end of that season.

The Gabon international maximised that time, working briefly but brilliantly with Arsene Wenger and scoring the last three goals of the Frenchman’s tenure.

It did not change much materially for an Arsenal side at the start of a painful transition but those early days of pre-non-negotiables Aubameyang were electric.

Daniel Sturridge (Liverpool, 2012/13)
Just outside a list of the ten most prolific forwards in Premier League history sits Sturridge, whose fruitless late-career loan spell with West Brom and time spent developing at Manchester City and Chelsea skews the figures somewhat.

For Liverpool – with the rather substantial caveat of his fitness and availability taken into account – there were few better forwards around. The following season alongside Luis Suarez will forever be his magnum opus but Sturridge’s half-season form after arriving from Chelsea was a fine precursor to that magnificence.

Winter signings to score 12 Premier League goals that season

Andy Cole (Manchester United, 1994/95)
Seven years before Cole hit the ground running at Ewood Park, he was outstanding from the moment an emotional Kevin Keegan felt compelled to explain his mid-season sale to aghast Newcastle supporters on the steps of St James’ Park.

Within two months he had scored in a Manchester derby win and became the first player in Premier League history to net five times in one match. Cole might have distributed those goals against poor Ipswich more evenly if he realised the mood Ludek Miklosko would be in on the final day.

Tony Yeboah (Leeds, 1994/95)
His career-defining, crossbar-shattering moments would come in his first full season in Yorkshire but Yeboah would not have been able to unleash such fury had he not won their Player of the Year award as the club’s top scorer after arriving from Eintracht Frankfurt in January 1995.

“At that time, Leeds were not sure I could play in English football, so they only loaned me for six months and wanted to test me before maybe they could sign me,” Yeboah said decades later. “After six months, I was fantastic and I had an offer from Manchester United.”

Winter signings to score 13 Premier League goals that season

Papiss Cisse (Newcastle, 2011/12)
Yeboah set the record for most Bundesliga goals scored by an African player shortly before his departure for Leeds; Cisse broke it 18 months before leaving Freiburg to join the Graham Carr revolution at Newcastle.

He mirrored that same burst out of the blocks, too. After finishing up at AFCON the Senegal forward returned along with international teammate Demba Ba to score the winner on his debut against Aston Villa, then net in a draw with Wolves a couple of games later.

Cisse could not make his presence felt in a Tyne-Wear derby soon after but he made up for it by scoring in six consecutive wins, finishing with a two-goal salvo at Stamford Bridge which included that Petr Cech-bamboozling banana shot.

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