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The January transfer window is upon us and we have already witnessed a flurry of activities in the one week that has elapsed. Normally, managers are wary of spending big in the winter. The reason being that the new players are afforded very little time to settle into their new environment and have to hit the ground running. Selling clubs are sceptical of losing their star assets in the middle of the season. As a result, inflated transfer fees seem to be the order of the day.
We bring to you the top ten most expensive winter signings in the history of football.
In what must rank as one of the bizarre transfer sagas, Robbie Keane was allowed to return to White Hart Lane after spending only six months at Merseyside, after the Reds splashed out £20m in the summer for the Irishman’s services. He scored only five Premier League goals during his stay and admitted that joining Liverpool was a ‘wrong move’. Interestingly, not a lot of money changed hands during the deal, as the Reds already owed Spurs a part of the sum from the initial transfer.
The biggest transfer in the history of Arsenal FC. After negotiations throughout January, the deal was finalised on the last day of the window, and it represented a significant change of tack on the part of Arsene Wenger to buy a marquee player with a hefty price tag instead of signing promising youngsters. On his arrival, he lit up the Premier League with 6 goals and 5 assists in his first 12 games (including a memorable 4-goal haul versus Liverpool). However, he could not deliver on the promise, as he slowly found himself shunted to the fringes of the Arsenal squad in the coming years with Wenger looking to move him out in this transfer window.
Anelka was signed by Avram Grant as cover for Drogba and Kalou, who were away on national duty at African Cup of Nations. He scored 59 goals in his 185 appearances in a Blues shirt. A nomadic footballer, having played at Liverpool, Man City, Fenerbahce, Bolton and Chelsea, he moved to Shanghai Shenhua on a eye popping salary of £200,000-per-week in December 2011 after a fallout with Andre Villas-Boas – then manager at Stamford Bridge.
Nigel de Jong was brought to the Eastlands by Mark Hughes in his attempt to add steel to the Manchester City midfield. He featured heavily in City’s Premier League campaigns in the 09-10 and 10-11 seasons. The 2011-12 season saw him slip down the pecking order as a host of other midfield stars arrived at the Etihad. In the summer of 2012, he was shipped out to AC Milan for a fee of less than £5m, after having featured in 128 games for City.
The nifty Uruguayan was signed by Liverpool from the Dutch giants for a substantial fee of £23m. One of the best signings of Kenny Dalglish, Suarez has every bit justified his price tag, and has become one of the mainstays of the Anfield side. Someone who polarises opinion like no other, he has his fair share of disciplinary problems, but also endeared himself to the Anfield faithful. With 15 goals in the Premier League already this season, he is in the running for the Golden Boot award, single-handedly spearheading the Liverpool front-line in the absence of another fit first team striker.
In what was one of the more surprising deals of the 2011 winter transfer window, Darren Bent moved from Sunderland (one of the top six clubs at that time) to a club embroiled in a relegation dogfight with Aston Villa. In the process, he broke the transfer fee record paid by the Villains. With 9 goals in 16 matches, he helped Villa beat the drop that year. After a mediocre 2011-12 season, Bent has found starts hard to come by under Paul Lambert. He has featured in only 10 Premier League matches this season, with his position seemingly usurped by summer signing Christian Benteke.
On a day when Chelsea splurged as if there was no tomorrow, the Brazilian was subject to a hefty £26m transfer deal from the Portuguese giants to Chelsea on the transfer deadline day. He found life a little difficult to adjust in the Premier League, with Gary Neville labelling him as “being controlled by a 10-year-old playing on his Playstation.” Nonetheless, he has tasted success with Chelsea, winning the FA Cup and UCL last season. Under Rafael Benitez, he has been given more freedom to express himself in a holding midfield role, and he seems to have finally cemented his place in the side this season.
After a couple of fruitful seasons with VFL Wolfsburg, in which he won the Bundesliga once and also received Bundesliga Players’ Footballer of the Year award, the Bosnian moved to the Etihad Stadium with the intention of going to the next level. However, in a star-studded line-up, he failed to register regular starts. In spite of having to start a number of matches on the bench, he has shown that he has still got the eye for goal, with 25 goals in 63 games (32 of them as a sub). Scoring goals in crucial times in crunch games, Dzeko typifies the ideal “Supersub”, a player Mancini can trust to bring on and change the course of a game.
The frantic transfer deadline day of 2011 saw two of the biggest transfers in EPL history. The Geordie’s transfer broke a number of records – the record transfer fee ever paid for a British player, as well as the biggest fee paid by the Reds. It was a panic buy necessitated by the departure of Torres, and Carroll miserably failed to live up to his price tag. 44 league games later, he was loaned out to West Ham in the summer of 2012 as Brendan Rodgers made it abundantly clear that he had no place for Carroll in his future vision of the Anfield side.
Abramovich’s hunt for a marquee striker ended (or has it?) when Chelsea paid a British record £50m to acquire the services of Torres from Liverpool. The change of jerseys resulted in a change of fortunes for the worse for El Nino, who once regarded as the deadliest strikers of the world. He scored only once in a Blue shirt in the 2010-11 season, and in the 2011-12 he lived under the shadow of Didier Drogba. So far, the 2012-13 season has also been disappointing for Torres, with Chelsea signing yet another striker (Demba Ba) to cover for the misfiring Spaniard.
Who do you feel was the best/worst signings from among the players mentioned in the list. Tell us in the comments section below.
