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The winter transfer window has started and all the teams in the Premier League have started to look at the players who will make their teams stronger. Some signings in January turn out to be masterstrokes but we are also inclined to get a few stinkers along the way considering the financial power every Premier League club has.
As no one can really guess in today's transfer market what the right amount for a player should be, we are bound to find a few ineffective signings on the way and we discuss the worst of them in recent history here.
These are the 4 worst January transfers to take place in the Premier League in my opinion:
#4 Jan Kromkamp
The last few years have seen Liverpool consolidate themselves as one of Europe's elite clubs for transfer negotiations, picking up the likes of Salah, Mane and Firmino for under 40 million pounds each and making a combined profit of over 150 million pounds on Suarez and Coutinho.
But back in the 2000s, their transfer business was in absolute shambles. Jan Kromkamp joined Liverpool from Villarreal in 2006. Kromkamp had just made 6 starts in LaLiga before joining Liverpool.
The then Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez took a risk signing Jan but it didn't really work out very well as Kromkamp couldn't offer anything to the Reds. He offered nothing on his deliveries and didn't really contribute defensively whenever he got a chance to play at the Anfield. He left the same summer for PSV after starting only 6 games for Liverpool that season.
#3 Wilfried Bony
Wilfried Bony joined Manchester City in 2015 for 28 million pounds from Swansea, and it proved to be a wasteful signing for the Manchester club. That summer, City had signed Sterling and De Bruyne who were soon to become invaluable assets to the Guardiola project, but Bony's signing in January didn't really work out.
After scoring 34 goals in a season and a half at Swansea, the Ivorian was one of Europe's most in demand strikers and City took a chance and snapped him up. He was brought in as a backup to Sergio Aguero and no one really expected big things of him at City.
His career never took off in Manchester as Manuel Pellegrini, the manager at the time, gave him only two starts in the season that he joined. Pellegrini never really favored Bony when he returned from the African Cup Of Nations in February 2015. Bony eventually left City in 2017, ending his forgettable time in the blue half of Manchester.
#2 Benni McCarthy
Benni McCarthy joined West Ham United in January 2010 and at the time, West Ham were in a relegation battle and had won only 4 games all season. In Benni McCarthy, they decided to sign a 32-year-old striker on the decline so as to try and save their campaign. Unsurprisingly it didn't work out and McCarthy had a forgettable stint at West Ham. He was even fined for not keeping his weight down.
It got so bad that he was paid 1.5 million pounds by West Ham to terminate his contract before the end of his second season at the Upton Park.
Benni's nightmares didn't end there as Vice Chairman Karren Brady, later on, described McCarthy as a player who was more devoted to filling his belly rather than filling the net and his woeful stats at West Ham seemed to back that up. In his 11 appearances for West Ham, he was not able to score a single goal and West Ham won none of the matches he played in.
#1 Fernando Torres and Andy Carroll
There is no escaping the infamous transfer that took place on the deadline day of the January transfer window in 2011. Fernando Torres joined Chelsea from Liverpool after the Blues were tempted by his blistering goalscoring form for the Reds. Torres was 26 years old when he joined Chelsea and he had had a history of getting injured.
The fear of another knock in addition to a general lack of confidence meant that one the best marksmen in Premier League took 732 minutes to score his first goal for the Blues and he failed to hit double figures in the Premier League for the next two seasons. Torres never really managed to reach the heights he achieved at Liverpool and was eventually offloaded by Chelsea.
Liverpool decided to replace Torres with Andy Carroll in the same month, and it was an even more bizarre transfer. They splashed 36 million quid on the lanky striker making the then 22-year-old the most expensive Englishman at the time. Carroll did not do anything near enough to prove his price tag at Liverpool. He scored 6 goals in the 44 games he played for Liverpool and ended his forgettable time at the Anfield by joining West Ham.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and they do not necessarily represent the views of Sportskeeda.
