10 players whose transfer fee didn't match their talents

#3 Wilfried Zaha - £3m (Manchester United to Crystal Palace, 2015)

Wilfried Zaha is now worth more than 15 times the £3m that Crystal Palace paid for him in 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Legendary boss Sir Alex Ferguson – who made Zaha his final signing – was gone and had been replaced by David Moyes, and the somewhat raw winger simply couldn’t settle in at the Premier League’s biggest club despite them having paid around £15m for him.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.