7 players who had their contracts terminated for bizarre reasons

#2 Nicolas Anelka - West Brom

Nicolas Anelka had a short-lived spell with West Brom that ended on a sour note

Nicolas Anelka signed for West Bromwich Albion on a free transfer, a contract that would have kept the Frenchman at the club for a year. Clearly, Anelka knew that it was destined to be a short-term association with the club. However, the manner in which Anelka’s association with the West Midlands club ended is downright bizarre.

Anelka celebrated one of the rare goals he scored for West Brom with a gesture that was dubbed the ‘quenelle’. While the Frenchman claimed that his act was not anti-Semitic nor racist, the comedian credited with creating the gesture, Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala, was linked with those very sentiments.

The FA took a dim view of Anelka’s act and banned the striker for 5 games while fining him 80,000 pounds as well. Anelka’s reaction? To announce on social media that he was ‘freeing’ himself from his West Brom contract, tweeting “I have taken the decision to free myself and put an end to the contract linking me with West Bromwich Albion.”

West Brom for their part, had this to day “Nicolas Anelka's purported termination of his Premier League contract this evening via Social Media was invalid as this was not conducted under the correct legal process as required by his contract.”

Terming Anelka’s behaviour ‘gross misconduct’, the Baggies cancelled the strikers contract days later, considering him far more trouble than he was worth.