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The January transfer window is always interesting to watch, because it tends to see clubs either ignore the paper talk, sit tight and wait for the summer to spend their money – or it can go the other way, with clubs throwing huge money at players who often turn out to be panic buys with the hope that they can save a season.
Not all January signings turn out to be bad; the likes of Luis Suarez, Nemanja Vidic and Wilfried Zaha went onto massive success at their clubs after moving in the winter, but quite often, big money has been spent on players who failed to make their mark.
Here are 5 of the most disastrous January signings in Premier League history.
#1 Andy Carroll – Newcastle to Liverpool (2011)
A lot of fans might claim Chelsea’s purchase of Fernando Torres from Liverpool for £50m in the January 2011 transfer window was a disaster, but at least the Spaniard played a part in the Blues’ eventual Champions League victory in 2012. The same cannot be said for striker Andy Carroll, who was signed on the same day for a fee of £35m after scoring 11 goals in 19 Premier League games with Newcastle.
The move was always a risk; Carroll was 22 years old and had never been a prolific striker despite the odd flash of brilliance, and to make him – at the time – the most expensive British player ever smacked of desperation.
The big man arrived at Anfield carrying an injury, and was unable to make his debut for the Reds until March. It took him until April to score his first goals for the club – a brace in a win over Manchester City – but he did not add to that total before the end of the season and questions were already being asked over his effectiveness.
2011-12 saw him make 47 appearances for Liverpool, but despite an improvement in his form towards the end of the season – scoring a winner in the FA Cup semi-final against Mersey rivals Everton – he managed just 9 goals and was then sent on loan to West Ham at the start of 2012-13, before making the move permanent at the end of the season.
The Hammers paid just £15m for the striker – leaving Liverpool with a £20m loss and plenty of regrets. At least Luis Suarez – who joined the Reds in the same window as Carroll – was a huge hit!
#2 Juan Cuadrado – Fiorentina to Chelsea (2015)
Chelsea’s signing of Colombian forward Juan Cuadrado in January 2015 was always a little strange. With Eden Hazard, Oscar, Ramires and Willian already at the club, they didn’t need another winger-come-forward, as evidenced when they used Mohamed Salah as a makeweight in the deal to bring Cuadrado to Stamford Bridge.
The Egyptian headed to Fiorentina on loan, while Chelsea also paid the Serie A club around £23m for Cuadrado’s services. And sure enough, the Colombian struggled to fit in from the off and was never really given a fair chance to show off his skills.
After a couple of games, he came under criticism from the fans, and while boss Jose Mourinho initially defended him, he seemingly changed his mind shortly after and essentially froze him out.
Cuadrado made just 4 starts for the Blues, with a further 8 appearances coming from the bench, and during his time at the club he failed to register a single goal or assist. 2015-16 saw him make one further appearance for Chelsea before being packed off on loan to Juventus, who would eventually purchase him outright for a fee of €20m, leaving the Blues with an unhealthy loss on a player who totalled less than 400 minutes of action for the club.
#3 Alexis Sanchez – Arsenal to Manchester United (2018)
Perhaps the only positive that can now be said about Alexis Sanchez’s move from Arsenal to Manchester United in January 2018 is that the Red Devils at least didn’t pay a transfer fee for him; in a rare straight swap, the Chilean headed to Old Trafford with Armenian midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan heading the other way.
Sanchez had been one of the Premier League’s most dynamic attackers at the Emirates, scoring a total of 60 goals for the Gunners in just 122 league appearances and providing plenty of assists, too. But if United had been expecting the move to work out in a similar fashion to that of Robin Van Persie – who moved from Arsenal to Old Trafford in 2012 – they were sorely mistaken.
It’s still hard to put a finger on quite what went wrong for Sanchez at United; handed a bumper contract that paid him £400,000 per week, it was as if the Chilean simply couldn’t be bothered at times, and he barely resembled the player he’d been at Arsenal. By the time 2017-18 ended with him scoring just 3 goals for his new club, it felt written in stone that he’d go down as an all-time bad transfer.
Sanchez continued to struggle in his second season at Old Trafford, failing to make an impact under both Jose Mourinho and his replacement Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. When he moved to Inter Milan on loan in the summer of 2019, it felt like a millstone had been removed from the Red Devils’ neck.
#4 Wilfried Bony – Swansea City to Manchester City (2015)
Ivorian striker Wilfried Bony joined Swansea City in the summer of 2013 and promptly became one of the Premier League’s most prolific scorers, bagging 16 in his debut season and then opening his second campaign at the club with another 9. That meant that bigger clubs were always going to be looking at him, and sure enough, he made a big money move in January 2015.
Manchester City was his destination, with the reigning Premier League champions paying £28m for him, making the striker the most expensive African player in football history. After returning from the African Cup of Nations, Bony made his City debut in February 2015, and ended 2014-15 with 2 goals in 10 Premier League games, most of them from the bench.
The following season saw him given more of a chance at the Etihad – but things just didn’t work out, as Bony scored just 4 goals in 26 league appearances, including 13 starts. It seemed he’d lost his goalscoring touch entirely, and when Pep Guardiola arrived at the club as boss in the summer of 2016, the Ivorian was immediately made available for a transfer.
He moved to Stoke City on a season-long loan that summer – and was never able to regain the form he initially showed for Swansea prior to him leaving England in January 2018. As of writing, Bony remains a free agent with no club.
#5 Fernando Torres - Liverpool to Chelsea (2011)
Andy Carroll's move to Liverpool might be widely recognised as one of the most disastrous January transfers in Premier League history, but his £35m switch was only made possible by another disastrous transfer that occurred on the same day - deadline day in January 2011 to be exact.
That was the day that saw Chelsea break the British transfer record fee to bring Fernando Torres to Stamford Bridge from Liverpool, after the Spaniard had scored a tremendous 65 goals in 102 Premier League games for the Reds across three and a half seasons.
At the time of his move, Torres had returned from knee surgery in the summer of 2011 and had scored just 9 goals in 23 games, but nobody could’ve predicted how badly his form would fall off after his move to London. ‘El Nino’ failed to find the back of the net on his Chelsea debut – ironically against his old club – and that led to a 14-game drought.
After three months, the Spaniard finally scored his first goal for his new club, but it would be his only one there in 2010-11, and while 2011-12 saw him score 11 goals for the Blues – including the equaliser against Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final second leg to send Chelsea into the final – he also went on a run of 24 games without a goal, and looked nothing like the player he’d been at Liverpool.
Torres’ Chelsea career ended at the end of 2013-14 with a loan move to AC Milan, and the Spaniard departed Stamford Bridge with just 20 Premier League goals in 110 appearances – making him one of the worst January signings of all time.
