5 times clubs massively overpaid for players

In one of the most surprising transfer stories of 2018, it looks like Watford’s Brazilian winger Richarlison will be once again hooking up with former boss Marco Silva, this time at Everton. Silva bought the Brazilian to the Premier League last season and he proved to be a major hit in the early months of 2017/18 before tailing off towards the end of the season.

Richarlison is clearly a talented player and so Everton making a move for him isn’t too big of a shock. The big surprise is the price tag – it’s being reported that the Toffees will be paying a massive £50m for the winger. For a player who scored 5 and assisted in 4 in 38 appearances last season, that seems a little overpriced by anyone’s standards.

Overpaying for a player is nothing new in the modern day game, though. Obviously, we don’t know whether Richarlison will succeed or fail at Goodison Park yet, but the following 5 players struggled after big-money moves, suggesting the clubs that purchased them overpaid by quite a substantial amount.

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#1 Andy Carroll - £35m to Liverpool in 2011

Liverpool paid way over the odds for Andy Carroll in 2011

When Fernando Torres moved from Liverpool to Chelsea for £50m in the January 2011 transfer window, the Reds clearly had money to burn and to appease their fans, they looked to get their deals done as quickly as possible.

The man they identified to replace Torres was Newcastle striker Andy Carroll, and despite the Geordie having started 2010/11 well – scoring 11 goals in 19 Premier League appearances - £35m always felt like a steep price for him.

Carroll was simply too unproven at that point to warrant becoming the most expensive British player in football history – and at the time, the 8th most expensive player ever – particularly when he was unable to make his Liverpool debut right away due to an injury.

In the end, Carroll did have some high points at Anfield – most notably his headed winner against local rivals Everton in the 2012 FA Cup semi-final – but by the end of that season he was deemed surplus to requirements and was sent on loan to West Ham for the 2012/13 season.

One season later, West Ham signed him permanently for £15m, meaning Liverpool lost around £20m on the striker, who ended his Liverpool career with a record of just 6 Premier League goals in 43 appearances. To say the Reds overpaid for him would be a massive understatement.

#2 Ousmane Dembele - £97m to Barcelona, 2017

Barcelona may have jumped the gun by paying so much money for Ousmane Dembele

Perhaps the transfer fee that Barcelona paid to Borussia Dortmund for young French attacker Ousmane Dembele last summer – a monstrous £97m or thereabouts – will be just considered a sign of the massive inflation of transfer fees in general at some point in the future. Right now though, regardless of Dembele’s talents, it’s hard to come to any other conclusion than to say Barcelona paid way too much for him.

The fee made Dembele the second-most expensive player in football history at that point, behind only Neymar Jr – who was sold by Barcelona to Paris St. Germain a few weeks prior to Dembele’s move. When you consider the more proven players who moved for less money, even that summer – Romelu Lukaku, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang for instance – it’s hard to justify £97m for a 21-year old prospect who’d played one season in the Bundesliga and had scored 10 goals in 49 appearances.

The jury is out on Dembele at Barcelona right now as his debut season was badly curtailed by injuries – a hamstring problem troubled him and kept him out for swathes of games, reducing him to just 17 appearances in La Liga – but even when he was fit, he didn’t look like a player worth his massive fee. And he hardly lit up this summer’s World Cup either even as France won the tournament.

Dembele could deliver the goods yet – at just 21 he’s still got plenty of time on his side – but if he can’t come good in 2018/19 then he could go down as one of the most expensive flops of all time – and perhaps the best ever example of a club overpaying for a player.

#3 David Luiz - £50m to Paris St. Germain, 2014

By making him the world's most expensive defender, Paris St. Germain overpaid hugely for David Luiz

There aren’t many top players who can be signed by the same club twice, and yet only cost the club a total of around £2.5m, but that’s the case with David Luiz. The Brazilian defender was signed by Chelsea for around £22.5m in the January 2011 transfer window and then spent three-and-a-half seasons at Stamford Bridge, where despite showing flashes of his potential, he came into a lot of criticism for some sloppy defending too.

Pundit Gary Neville famously compared his defending skills to a player “being controlled by a 10-year old on a Playstation”, and after a disastrous performance in Brazil’s infamous 7-1 loss to Germany in the 2014 World Cup, it seemed the defender’s stock couldn’t drop much lower. But somehow, Paris St. Germain came in with a crazy £50m offer in the summer of 2014 that Chelsea basically had to accept. Incredibly, it was a world-record transfer fee for a defender!

To be fair to Luiz, he did win the Ligue 1 championship and the Coupe de France twice during his time in Paris, but then with PSG’s status as the biggest and most powerful club in France, that was probably to be expected. It came as almost as big a surprise then when Chelsea’s then-new manager Antonio Conte re-signed the Brazilian in the summer of 2016 for a far lower fee of around £30m.

Luiz actually performed well in the 2016/17 season as Chelsea won the Premier League title, and although he lost his place in 2017/18 and appears to be reaching the end of the road at Stamford Bridge, his transfer fees still represent good business for the Blues, given how heavily PSG overpaid for him.

#4 Michy Batshuayi - £33m to Chelsea, 2016

Michy Batshuayi was probably overpriced at £33m

In the summer of 2016, Belgian striker Michy Batshuayi was hot property across the European football scene. He’d just scored a solid 17 goals in 36 league games for Marseille and was seen as one of the top up-and-coming strikers outside of the top divisions. It seemed only a matter of time before a big club came to snap him up and so it was no surprise when Chelsea signed him during Euro 2016.

The only surprise was the huge transfer fee - £33m. Sure, it wasn’t a record fee for Chelsea or anything as they’ve always been a big-spending side, but given the Blues already had a star striker in Diego Costa and didn’t tend to play more than one pure forward due to the presence of Willian and Eden Hazard, it was quite shocking that they’d pay so much for someone who’d likely be used as backup.

Unfortunately for the Belgian, the doubters have basically been proven right ever since. Batshuayi was used sparingly in his first season at Stamford Bridge, and despite scoring 9 goals in all competitions and performing decently when he did appear, he started just one Premier League game. And 2017/18 was no different as he was given just 3 Premier League starts and then moved on loan to Borussia Dortmund in January.

At this stage it seems ever more likely that Batshuayi will be offloaded this summer – despite his stats at Dortmund being more impressive than Chelsea’s main striker Alvaro Morata was able to deliver last season – and if he does leave, the Blues probably won’t get £33m for him – meaning they probably overpaid for the Belgian in the first place.

#5 Danny Drinkwater - £35m to Chelsea, 2017

It's a mystery why Chelsea spent so much on Danny Drinkwater to use him purely as a bit-part player

As with Batshuayi, the transfer of Danny Drinkwater to Chelsea from Leicester in September 2017 marked another example of the Blues being overly willing to pay a monstrous fee for a player who would largely be used as a backup option. Drinkwater had won the Premier League title in 2015/16 with Leicester City as largely an ever-present, but his performances were buoyed by the presence of N’Golo Kante, who moved to Chelsea himself in the summer of 2016.

Without Kante beside him, Drinkwater didn’t look nearly as effective in 2016/17 and despite again appearing in the majority of Leicester’s Premier League games, his form clearly dropped – for instance, his WhoScored.com average rating slipped from 7.30 in 2015/16 to 6.78 in 2016/17. Leicester ended that season in a disappointing 12th place, and it was no surprise when Drinkwater lost his place in the England squad too.

That only made it more surprising when Chelsea decided to sign the midfielder at the end of the summer 2017 transfer window – for a huge fee of £35m, too. With the likes of Kante, Cesc Fabregas and Tiemoue Bakayoko already at Stamford Bridge, playing time was always going to be scant for Drinkwater and so it was hardly shocking when he made just 5 starts in the Premier League for his new club.

Current rumours have Chelsea looking to offload Drinkwater already – bringing into question exactly what the point of signing him was in the first place, especially at such a hefty transfer fee. Recent reports suggest that Chelsea are looking to recoup at least £30m for him, but that doesn’t seem likely at all given his lack of action last season and so the likelihood is that they’ll take quite a loss on a player they overpaid massively for, to begin with.