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There are few things in football that garner as much attention and column inches as a player’s transfer fee. The modern world of football is simply obsessed with money, and so discussion of the worth of a player is always a hot topic.
Of course, throughout the history of football – especially from the 90s onwards, when transfer fees began to spiral wildly out of control – there have been plenty of players who moved for fees that simply didn’t match up to their abilities – and eventual achievements – on the pitch.
Here are 10 players whose transfer fees didn’t match up to their talents – players that were either extraordinarily cheap, or far too expensive.
#1 Eric Cantona - £1.2m (Leeds United to Manchester United, 1992)
Eric Cantona arrived in England from France in January 1992 with Leeds United, carrying the reputation of a player who was sublimely talented, but somewhat of a loose cannon. Leeds fans, however, only saw the good side of him, and in his debut season with the club, he helped them to win the old First Division title.
After scoring 6 goals in 13 games during the maiden Premier League season, though, the French forward made a shocking move, heading to Leeds’ bitter rivals Manchester United for a fee of just £1.2m.
Football legend suggests that United weren’t initially looking to sign Cantona, and only enquired about his availability when Leeds made an enquiry about defender Denis Irwin; regardless, the move turned out to be a hugely significant one for the Red Devils.
When Cantona arrived at Old Trafford, United were lagging behind in the Premier League title race – but the Frenchman’s talents galvanised the team and they ended up storming to their first top flight league title in 26 years.
Cantona went on to score 82 goals for the Red Devils over the course of 5 seasons, helping them to win another 3 Premier League titles and 2 FA Cups, and was named the PFA Players' Player of the Year in 1993-94.
Not only did ‘King Eric’ become the Premier League’s first overseas superstar – paving the way for future talents like Thierry Henry and Cristiano Ronaldo – but he also cost around the same amount of money as current star Paul Pogba earns in a month, making him one of football’s all-time great bargains.
#2 Andy Carroll - £35m (Newcastle United to Liverpool, 2011)
When Chelsea paid a British record £50m fee to sign Liverpool striker Fernando Torres in January 2011, it left the Reds with a lot of money to find a replacement – and the man they chose was Newcastle United’s Andy Carroll.
A product of the Magpies’ youth academy, Carroll had just turned 22 years old at the time, but despite his clear physical talents, he still appeared to be very raw in terms of his actual striking ability. He’d scored 17 goals in 39 games for Newcastle in the EFL Championship, but in the top flight, Carroll had just 14 goals to his name and had only made 42 appearances.
That didn’t prevent Liverpool from making a £30m bid for him on transfer deadline day – and incredibly, when Newcastle turned that offer down, the Reds quickly returned with a £35m offer that the Magpies had little choice but to accept.
Unfortunately, the young striker’s price tag simply didn’t match up with his abilities at that stage of his career – even if he clearly had potential – and despite showing some flashes of brilliance at Anfield, his time there turned out to be a huge failure due to injuries and his style not really suiting Liverpool’s way of playing.
After spending just one full season at Anfield – 2011-12 – Carroll moved to West Ham on loan, and eventually made the move permanent. He scored just 11 goals in total for Liverpool, meaning each strike cost the club just over £3m!
#3 Wilfried Zaha - £3m (Manchester United to Crystal Palace, 2015)
Given he’s now valued at somewhere around £50m, it’s safe to say that the paltry £3m that Crystal Palace paid Manchester United in February 2015 to bring Wilfried Zaha back to Selhurst Park on a permanent basis represents an incredible bargain and in no way was representative of his talents.
Of course, that’s easy to say with the power of hindsight, and at the time, it seemed like the best thing for United.
The Ivorian winger was signed by the Red Devils from Palace – his boyhood club – in January 2013 after he’d broken into the Eagles’ first team in the EFL Championship and established himself as one of their most exciting young players. But when he moved to Old Trafford in the following summer, he arrived at a very different club from the one he’d been expecting.
Legendary boss Sir Alex Ferguson – who made Zaha his final signing – was gone and had been replaced by David Moyes, and the somewhat raw winger simply couldn’t settle in at the Premier League’s biggest club despite them having paid around £15m for him.
Zaha made just 4 appearances for the Red Devils before being sent to Cardiff on loan, where he hardly set the world alight.
Given the tag of a busted prospect, the Ivorian returned to Palace on an initial loan in the summer of 2014 before making that £3m move, but since then he’s gone from strength to strength, becoming the Eagles’ key player and the main reason they’ve retained their Premier League status in recent seasons.
6 years on, it’s probably fair to say that United likely wish they’d demanded more for him.
#4 Ousmane Dembele - £97m (Borussia Dortmund to Barcelona, 2017)
The story of Ousmane Dembele’s mega-money transfer to Barcelona is remarkably similar to the story of how Andy Carroll was signed by Liverpool; like the Reds, Barca had sold a key player – in this case Neymar – for a huge transfer fee (£198m), and wanted to make an impact by spending an equally huge amount on a replacement.
And just like Liverpool, La Blaugrana made a risky move, choosing a young and talented, albeit raw and unproven player.
France’s Dembele had spent just 1 season at Borussia Dortmund, and while he’d performed well – scoring 6 goals and registering 12 assists in 32 appearances – frankly he’d done nothing to suggest that he was worth £97m (€105m), making him at the time the second-most expensive player in the game’s history.
That didn’t stop Barca, though, who splashed out the huge fee on the forward, who had only just turned 20 years old. And despite winning two La Liga titles since his arrival in Spain, the move hasn’t exactly paid off for Dembele; injuries and dips in form have restricted him to just 75 appearances for the club, while his goal return of 19 has also been relatively unimpressive.
Dembele still has time to become a success at the Nou Camp, but as his injuries build up and the Barca fans lose patience, it’s looking less and less likely. Sadly, the Frenchman is definitely an example of a player whose transfer fee simply didn’t represent the level he was at when he was transferred.
#5 Kepa Arrizabalaga - £71m (Athletic Bilbao to Chelsea, 2018)
The world record transfer fee for a goalkeeper was broken twice in the summer of 2018 by Premier League clubs, but while Alisson Becker has practically repaid every penny of the £56m it cost Liverpool to bring him to Anfield from Roma, the same cannot be said for Kepa Arrizabalaga, who moved from Athletic Bilbao to Chelsea for a huge fee of £71m.
Despite his clear raw talents, the move was always a risk for the Blues given Kepa’s young age for a goalkeeper – just 23 at the time of his transfer – and the fact that with just two seasons of top flight football under his belt, he was seriously lacking in experience, having never even played in European competition for instance.
Had the Spanish international settled into life at Stamford Bridge and performed well, the move could be looked at as a risk that paid off, but unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case at all; Kepa’s form was mixed throughout his debut season and he gained notoriety when he refused to be substituted despite suffering an injury in the 2019 EFL Cup final.
This season has been even worse for him, too; recent games have seen him dropped in favour of backup keeper Willy Caballero after statistics showed that he had the worst save percentage in the Premier League, and while he might get back into Frank Lampard’s favour yet, there’s every chance Chelsea could sell him in the summer – likely making a major loss in the process after overspending on him to begin with.
#6 Andrew Robertson - £8m (Hull City to Liverpool, 2017)
£8m doesn’t buy a club a lot these days, particularly in England. It’s become more and more common to see transfer fees spiralling upwards even outside of the top flight, and as an example, Hull City were able to secure a fee of potentially £25m from West Ham for forward Jarrod Bowen in the recent January transfer window.
That’s why it’s so wild to remember that the Tigers were only able to fetch £8m from Liverpool for left-back Andrew Robertson in the summer of 2017 following their relegation. Even at the time, the move felt like a bargain for the Reds, as the Scottish international had been one of Hull’s shining lights in a poor season, playing in 33 of their games and being directly involved in 3 goals.
Sure enough, to say £8m has represented an incredible coup for Liverpool would now be an understatement. Robertson took some time to embed himself into Jurgen Klopp’s first team, but since he’s made the left-back position his own he’s been absolutely outstanding.
2018-19 saw him end the season with 11 assists in 36 Premier League appearances, and he’s well on his way to a similar return in the current campaign, having scored 1 goal and made 7 assists in his 28 games. Today, Robertson is widely recognised as one of the world’s best left-backs – and it remains a mystery how the Reds got away with paying so little for him!
#7 Nicolas Pepe - £72m (Lille to Arsenal, 2019)
Okay, so it’d be unfair to write off Nicolas Pepe as a big-money flop at this stage; in fact, the Ivorian winger has begun to hit form lately, and has thus far scored 4 goals and registered 6 assists in his 23 Premier League appearances for Arsenal during the current campaign. He may well go on to become one of the league’s best performers in the near future, in fact.
Even if that’s the case, though, the truth is that he’ll probably need to go on to become an all-time great in England’s top flight to justify what was realistically an insane transfer fee. The Gunners paid a club record £72m for the winger last summer, making him the joint 17th most expensive footballer of all time in the process.
Had Pepe done enough at his previous clubs to justify that kind of fee? In a word, no. Prior to his move to North London, the Ivorian international had played just 3 full seasons in France’s Ligue 1, and only one of them – 2018-19 – saw him put together some truly outstanding stats, scoring 22 goals and registering 11 assists in 38 appearances for Lille.
But surely 1 strong season in what is realistically a B-level league can’t be considered enough to justify such a huge price tag – meaning there’s a ton of pressure on Pepe to succeed that wouldn’t normally have been placed upon him.
#8 Paolo Di Canio - £1.5m (Sheffield Wednesday to West Ham, 1999)
By 1999, transfer fees hadn’t quite reached the heights they’ve done today, but a lot of money was still being spent on players, particularly in the Premier League.
At the time of Paolo Di Canio’s £1.5m move from Sheffield Wednesday to West Ham, the British transfer fee record stood at £15m – paid by Newcastle for Blackburn’s Alan Shearer in the summer of 1996.
Sure, Di Canio was 30 at the time of his move, but he was still a hugely talented forward who’d played for Italian giants Lazio, Juventus, Napoli and AC Milan, and his debut season in the Premier League saw him score 12 goals for the Owls and be named as their Player of the Year. So how did the Hammers sign him for a fee that in no way reflected his playing ability?
Well, for a simple reason; at the time of his move, Di Canio was considered damaged goods in the English game, as the first half of the 1998-99 season had seen him slapped with an 11-match ban after he was red carded and then shoved referee Paul Alcock to the ground during Wednesday’s game with Arsenal.
Despite his fiery reputation, Hammers boss Harry Redknapp clearly felt he was worth the risk – the cheap transfer fee probably helped – and he turned out to be right.
Di Canio went on to spend 4 and a half seasons at Upton Park, scoring 47 goals in the process and helping the club to make European competition for the first time in years – and never became embroiled in controversy throughout his time there.
#9 Denilson - £21.5m (Sao Paulo to Real Betis, 1998)
Back in the 1990s, the world record transfer fee tended to mark out players who were thought to be the best – or at least one of the best – in the world at the time.
The decade saw the record broken 9 times, and all of the players who held the record – outside of Gianluigi Lentini, whose career was wrecked by a car accident – would now be considered legends of the game.
The only exception would be Brazilian winger Denilson, who moved from boyhood club Sao Paulo to Real Betis in the summer of 1998 for a world record fee of £21.5m. The flashy 20-year-old had broken into Sao Paulo’s first team as a 17-year-old, but despite showing an array of tricks and flicks, realistically it didn’t make a lot of sense for the Spanish side to pay more than Inter had paid Barcelona for the great Ronaldo Nazario a year earlier.
Sure enough, Denilson simply couldn’t live up to the huge transfer fee, and ended up scoring just 5 goals over the course of his first two seasons at the club, with the end of the second one seeing Betis relegated into Spain’s Segunda Division.
The Brazilian remained at the Andalusian club until the 2004-05 campaign, but by that point he’d faded out and was merely a fringe player, and after a brief period in France with Bordeaux, Denilson became a journeyman of sorts, playing in Saudi Arabia, the USA, Greece and even Vietnam.
He never did fulfil the potential he’d once shown – seemingly a victim of Betis paying a fee for him that simply didn’t match his talents at the time.
#10 N’Golo Kante - £5.6m (Caen to Leicester City, 2015)
Leicester City’s famous Premier League title winning side of 2015-16 was filled with players bought for bargain fees, but while Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez and Kasper Schmeichel could all be considered for this list of players whose fees didn’t match up with their talent, the man in that side who fits that criteria the best is undoubtedly N’Golo Kante.
The French midfielder was largely an unknown when the Foxes inked him from Caen – who had only gained promotion into France’s Ligue 1 in 2013-14 – for a fee of just £5.6m, and in all honesty, at the time nobody could’ve known how much of a bargain that figure represented.
Kante went on to star for Leicester in their famous title triumph, missing just a single league game throughout the campaign. Along the way he registered 175 tackles – 31 more than any other player – and 157 interceptions, again more than any other player in the competition.
The summer of 2016 saw him move to Chelsea – for a fee of £32m, much more befitting of his incredible talents – and he proved to be a massive hit at Stamford Bridge too, helping the Blues to win a Premier League title and becoming the first player since Eric Cantona - another Frenchman whose cheap transfer fee didn’t match his talents – to win back-to-back top flight titles with different clubs.
