Top 10: Worst Premier League summer transfers
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Top 10: Worst Premier League summer transfers
For every Jose Bosingwa or Brad Friedel there is a Robbie Keane or Dave Kitson, a player whose arrival promised much but delivered little. We name and shame the ten worst Premier League signings of the summer in 2008.
1. Robbie Keane (Tottenham – Liverpool, £20 million)
Keane was billed as the perfect attacking foil for Fernando Torres when he joined the club he supported as a boy for what many at the time felt was slightly over the odds, despite Keane’s obvious talent that made him the top Premier League goalscorer in the calendar year of 2007.
But it hasn’t gone well. In 22 appearances for Liverpool he has completed the 90 minutes on just three occasions and scored just twice in the league. Being substituted for David Ngog at Anfield against West Ham when Liverpool were chasing the game and preventing a certain goal for Torres at Sunderland by running in his way early in the season are emblematic moments in his difficult start to life at Anfield.
2. Jo (CSKA Moscow – Manchester City, £19 million)
Manchester City’s record signing – albeit for less than two months – Jo is a lasting legacy of the incompetence of previous owner Thaksin Shinawatra and a lesson that buying Brazilian is no guarantee of buying quality. That £19 million has bought just one league goal – in the 6-0 drubbing of Portsmouth – and two more in European competition, against Omonia Nicosia. Jo hasn’t started a league game since the 2-2 draw with Newcastle on October 20 and with Mark Hughes set to go mad in the January sales, he is unlikely to any time soon.
3. Heurelho Gomes (PSV Eindhoven – Tottenham, £7.8 million)
Gomes has become the latest custodian to fall foul of the goalkeeping graveyard that is White Hart Lane. A regular in the Champions League with former club PSV Eindhoven, Gomes was seen as the experienced, reliable answer to the problem of Paul Robinson, but instead has turned out to be a comedy turn whose fear of crosses is more pronounced than Dracula's. His errors are too numerous mention here but the goal he gifted to Fulham stands out as the worst.
4. Giovani Dos Santos (Barcelona – Tottenham, £8.6 million)
An undoubtedly gifted, ball playing forward schooled in the footballing hothouse of Barcelona, there was always a question mark over the physique of the slight Mexican moving to the Premier League. As Tottenham laboured under Juande Ramos, Dos Santos cut a bemused figure, when he played. Harry Redknapp’s revival does not seem likely to have a place for the youngster.
5. Dave Kitson (Reading – Stoke City, £5.5 million)
Kitson has turned in the occasional intelligent, busy performance and has suffered due to injury but, those qualifications aside, when Stoke City broke their transfer record to sign Kitson they thought they were buying goals – that he hasn’t registered a single one makes Kitson’s time at the club a failure.
6. Xisco (Deportivo La Coruna – Newcastle, £5.7 million)
Brought in against then manager Kevin Keegan’s wishes on transfer deadline day, Jimenez Tejeda Xisco has struggled to adapt to life in the North East. Even the change of manger hasn’t helped, with the Spanish Under-21 international not starting a game under Joe Kinnear. Injuries have played their part but, aside from a goal against Hull in September, the striker has added little when Newcastle have needed a lot of help in that department.
7. Nicky Shorey (Reading – Aston Villa, £3 million)
Shorey has not seen much Premier League football since a howler gifted Middlesbrough a goal and the game in the dying minutes of a match in early November. It wasn’t the former England international’s first mistake of a difficult season at Villa Park. Shorey is the only recognised left-back at the club but his place has been taken by right-back Luke Young in recent weeks, a measure of how far he has fallen in manager Martin O’Neil’s estimations.
8. Johan Elmander (Toulouse – Bolton, £11 million)
Elmander may well have helped himself to a couple of goals against Sunderland – but that sentence carries its own qualification rather than an endorsement of his talents. Bolton’s record signing should have had a hat-trick that day and his performances in the first part of the season were woeful. Whether his recent success, as with Bolton’s recent good form, will be lasting remains to be seen.
9. Pascal Chimbonda, Teemu Tainio and Steed Malbranque (Tottenham – Sunderland, undisclosed)
When items are bulked together for a discount sale you can be sure the constituent parts aren’t everything the seller might have you believe. And so it was with this three-for-one sale at Tottenham. Malbranque was quality at Fulham but vanished at White Hart Lane, Tainio full of potential and nothing more and Chimbonda as much trouble as talent. In Roy Keane’s struggling side none has had anything like a genuinely positive impact.
10. Marvin Emnes (Sparta Rotterdam – Middlesbrough, £3.2 million)
Marvin who, you ask? Quite. Middlesbrough have not won any of the three league matches in which he has featured, always from the bench, and though manager Gareth Southgate has suggested the 20-year-old is one for the future, can a club the size of Middlesbrough really afford over £3 million for a reserve team player these days?