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#5 Chris Samba
Anzhi Makhachkala - QPR
Date of arrival - 31 January 2013
Transfer fee - £12.5m
How this man was able to pull off a large transfer deal not once but twice is quite baffling, to say the least.
A brutish defender lacking in any real flair, Samba was not extraordinary even at his best, so it was quite shocking when then moneybags Anzhi Makhachkala sanctioned his purchase in 2012 for £12.3m from Blackburn Rovers on a salary of £100,000/week (making him the highest paid defender in the world at the time), although, in fairness to the Congolese, the Russian club did make a lot of questionable purchases in and around that time.
Even more preposterous was the decision by then QPR manager Harry Redknapp to give the green light on Samba's return to the EPL, but this time with the London club for a fee in the region of £12.5m on a similar salary to the one he received at Anzhi, in a deal which the Russian's club's director said QPR were out of their minds to make.
QPR were in danger of being relegated at the time of his purchase, with Redknapp stating that Samba was the defender that they needed to help them avoid the drop.
The bulky centre-back hardly made any new friends among the Rangers fans when he told them to forget about his salary and focus instead on what he could bring to the table (which admittedly was not much).
It goes without saying that Samba was powerless to stop QPR from going down, even putting in some shambolic performances including one against Fulham for which he had to issue an apology to the fans.
On 2 July 2013 (less than six months later), Samba was once more on the move, this time back to Anzhi in another £12m deal, but that did not last either and he has since been something of a journeyman, failing to stay at any club long enough to prove his worth, further highlighting the folly of QPR's dealing in January 2013.
