Every Premier League club’s worst waste-of-money transfer ever

Time makes fools of us all, especially directors of football.

With hundreds of millions of euros currently flying around between football clubs using the very cables you are using to read this piece (isn’t technology wonderful?), there’s always a chance that several dozen of those millions will be spent on future entries to this list of the worst signings made by each of the current 20 Premier League clubs – from the “absolutely not worth the money” to the “what was in this for anybody?”.

ARSENAL: Nicolas Pepe
The inspiration for reviving the list, and like many others on here, we need to stress that Pepe has our sympathy because, as he has pointed out, he didn’t ask for Arsenal to spend £79m on him. But spend it they did, back in 2019, when such numbers still attracted cries of ‘HOW MUCH?!’ even from those of you who live outside Yorkshire.

Now without a club and doing the interview rounds to quite fairly point out his return of 27 goals and 21 assists in 112 Premier League outings wouldn’t be seen as dreadful if he had only been half the price, we still can’t get past that fee.

ASTON VILLA: David Unsworth
Signed for £3m. Decided Birmingham was too far from home. Was sold back to club-before-last Everton for £3m a month later. No harm done, but a complete waste of everybody’s time.

BOURNEMOUTH: Brad Smith
We’re not sure what it was about Brad Smith’s 11 appearances for Liverpool and 10 outings for League One Swindon Town that led Bournemouth to believe that the Aussie left-back was worth £6m back in 2016, but if they wanted someone who would also barely make it to double digits for them as well, then mission accomplished.

Smith played all of 11 games for them, too, proving unable to replace Charlie Daniels, who had won a violin duel with the devil somewhere outside Atlanta a couple of years earlier and been granted an unlikely Premier League career in return. Smith went out to Seattle Sounders in search of his own piece of that action, but aside from three games on loan at Cardiff, has remained in America ever since.

BRENTFORD: Mikkel Damsgaard
Probably the best signing of the 20 on the list, because Brentford are officially Good At Transfers – but zero goals and two assists in 49 Premier League appearances over two seasons after a £12.7m outlay isn’t great, even if £12.7m isn’t actually a lot of money to spend on a winger these days.

MORE ON TRANSFERS FROM F365:
👉 Five-year Premier League net spend table has Man Utd in second
👉 Every Premier League transfer from the summer of 2024
👉 The 20 biggest transfers from the summer of 2024

BRIGHTON AND HOVE ALBION: Alireza Jahanbakhsh
A very handsome man, and a very expensive one by Brighton’s standards back in 2018  – a club record, unsurprisingly, given they had only just been promoted to the top flight. They would have hoped for more than two goals in 50 appearances though, we imagine.

CHELSEA: Romelu Lukaku
It takes quite some doing to make people wonder why on earth you sold a very good player, then seven years later make everybody wonder why on earth you brought him back. And for nearly a hundred million quid, no less. Eight goals in 26 Premier League games is – and we have checked this – not worth that amount of money to Chelsea. And he’s still there.

CRYSTAL PALACE: Alexander Sorloth
Sometimes, a move just doesn’t work out. Sorloth was (mostly) prolific before joining Palace, and has been (mostly) prolific since leaving: he was just one more goal away from being the top scorer in La Liga last season with 23 in 34 for Villarreal.

It never happened at Palace following his £9m move in January 2018, though: Sorloth scored just once in 20 appearances – and that was in the League Cup – before being sent to out on loan to Gent and then Trabzonspor. The happy ending for Palace: they got their money back, splitting the €22m fee RB Leipzig paid for him with Trabzonspor.

EVERTON: Davy Klaassen
After 27 Eredivisie goals across two seasons at Ajax immediately preceding his move to Goodison Park in 2017,  attacking midfielder Klaassen looked a tidy bit of business even at £23.6m.

But countryman Ronald Koeman’s departure early on in the season only made his prospects even dimmer than they already were after seven appearances without a goal. As early as January, new gaffer Sam Allardyce was desperate to get rid, but it took until the summer to make it happen, for about half the money he had signed for.

FULHAM: Kostas Mitroglou
A regular goalscorer in his home country for Olympiacos (he had scored more than a goal per game in the half-season before his move) Mitroglou arrived at Craven Cottage as their potential saviour for relegation for a then-pretty whopping £11m in January 2014 – a club record at the time.

In his injury-hit spell, he made one start and two appearances from the bench, scored no goals, then went out to Olympiacos and Benfica on loan (later joining the Portuguese side permanently) to rub salt in the wounds by making an immediate return to being very good.

IPSWICH TOWN: Finidi George
Part of the great Ajax side that reached back-to-back Champions League finals and beat AC Milan in 1995  (with George starting on the wing in both games), the Nigerian international arrived at Ipswich following their surprise fifth-place finish in the Premier League in 2001.

Ipswich paid £3.1m for his services, which for the young people was not, like, tonnes, but still not insubstantial in those days – but proved to be thoroughly underwhelming, with two of his six Premier League goals coming in his debut against Derby, in which his opposite number was sent off early on.  That was about as good as it got for him and he left after two years, one of which was spent in the second tier.

LEICESTER CITY: Ahmed Musa
Still high on their unlikeliest of Premier League title victories, Leicester splashed out a club record £16.6m to bring in Musa from CSKA Moscow. 18 months later, they sent him back on loan having contributed just seven starts, 14 appearances from the bench, two goals and no assists.

LIVERPOOL: Paul Konchesky
That summer of 2010 still gives Liverpool fans nightmares, with Joe Cole, Danny Wilson and Christian Poulsen all arriving in a summer overseen by the short-tenured Roy Hodgson. But Konchesky, bless him, gets the nod not really because of his £3m fee, or because of his performances (which were not up to the standard, but not the worst of any Liverpool player of the past 32 years).

It’s more what Konchesky represented: a player and a manager arriving from Fulham together in what almost felt like a wilfully unambitious effort to drag them down to mid-table. Oh, and Andy Carroll arrived for £35m later that season, too, after Kenny Dalglish had already taken the reins.

MANCHESTER CITY: Eliaquim Mangala
He cost £40m, which was loads for a defender ten years ago. He was rubbish. He left after two years. The end.

MANCHESTER UNITED: Kleberson
Having learned nothing from their experiences with 1996 signings Karel Poborsky and Jordi Cruyff, Manchester United decided to splash out £6.5m on midfielder Kleberson a year on from his impressive performances for Brazil at the 2002 World Cup.

Intended to replace the disappointing Juan Sebastian Veron, Kleberson did at least live up to the ‘disappointing’ part. Twenty appearances in two seasons, then sold to Besiktas for less than half what they paid for him. Good work.

NEWCASTLE UNITED: Michael Owen
The hope at the time was that Owen, still only 25 years old in 2005, had simply had an Ian-Rush-at-Juventus year abroad with Real Madrid after Liverpool cashed in lest they lose him on a Bosman.

At £16.8m, Owen cost Newcastle 1.12 Alan Shearers and contributed 0.15 as many goals. He was given his release following Newcastle’s relegation, with his spell so underwhelming that Owen’s agency felt compelled to tout around a hilariously crap ‘look, he’s still good, honest’ brochure to potential new clubs. Incredibly, Manchester United bit.

NOTTINGHAM FOREST: Omar Richards
Pounds spent in 2022: 7,100,000. Minutes played since 2022: 0,000,000.

SOUTHAMPTON: Dani Osvaldo
Let us paraphrase another famous name from Roma: he came, he scored three goals in 13 games, he headbutted the captain.

Yes, of course Southampton got rid as quickly as possible. Yes, of course Osvaldo caused trouble everywhere else he went too. Yes, of course he retired at 30 to focus on his music career.

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR: Bongani Khumalo
£1.5m may not have been a lot of money for Spurs in 2011, but it’s £1.5m more than any club should spent on 24-year-old centre-back who makes zero appearances for the club and spends his entire four-year contract out on a series of loans of decreasing standard.

WEST HAM UNITED: Savio Nsereko
Another one that’s easy to sell with just a few numbers: £9m in 2009 money. One start. Eight appearance from the bench. No goals. Sold for less than a third of the money just seven months later.

WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS: Goncalo Guedes
Wolves have enjoyed their *ahem* links to Portuguese football with numerous superb signings coming from the west coast of Iberia over the past few years.

Guedes was very much not one of them. Signed for around £27.5m in summer 2022 after an impressive spell with Valencia, Guedes contributed just a goal and an assist in 13 appearances before being loaned out to Benfica the following January. The 27 year old has just returned from another loan spell, at Villarreal, and still has another three years left on his deal.

MORE ON TRANSFERS FROM F365:
👉 Five-year Premier League net spend table has Man Utd in second
👉 Every Premier League transfer from the summer of 2024
👉 The 20 biggest transfers from the summer of 2024