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Roman Abramovich has overseen a fair share of transfer duds at ChelseaChelsea have a track record of splurging in the transfer window, and just like many other clubs, they have had a lot of signings that have failed to perform. Sometimes it’s because the player is not ‘Chelsea quality’ and sometimes they buy quality players by paying huge fees, but the player fails to deliver.In recent years, Chelsea have spent abundantly on young and promising players, and have sent several of them out on loan. Many of these players have never or hardly played for the Blues and have then been sold for a good fee. The likes of Romelu Lukaku and Kevin De Bruyne are very good examples of the same.So, here is a look at 10 big signings made by Chelsea in the last decade that failed.
#10 Lassana Diarra
Lassana Diarra signed for Chelsea in 2005, but he did not get much first team action as he was mainly used as an understudy to compatriot Claude Makelele.
He improved his game constantly by learning from Makelele who redefined the defensive midfielder position. Diarra put in impressive performances for the reserve team but Mourinho gave Diarra game time in the Cup matches and played him in the final two league games of the season.
His contract was set to expire in January 2008 and since there were no talks of extending it, Chelsea sold him to Arsenal on 31st August, 2007. Diarra made just 30 appearances for Chelsea in his two seasons at the club and most of them were as a substitute late-on in the game.
Diarra didn’t get a lot of game time at Arsenal either and he moved to Portsmouth and eventually got a move to Spanish giants Real Madrid. He had a decent spell with Real Madrid, but left them in 2012 for Anzhi.
He is currently without a club after having been released by Lokomotiv Moscow due to his attitude problems.
#9 Claudio Pizarro
Claudio Pizarro was the third choice striker for Bayern Munich when they won the Champions League in 2013, but the Peruvian has proved that he is much more than a benchwarmer. Even though he played as a backup striker in the last two seasons at Bayern Munich he still scored 24 goals in 54 appearances for the Bavarians and most of them were despite having playing as a substitute.
This is Pizarro’s second spell with Bayern Munich. He became a star in the Bundesliga while playing for Werder Bremen and Bayern Munich and he scored 138 times during his eight year spell in Germany.
In 2007, when his contract expired, he joined Chelsea on a Bosman transfer. He got off to a good start at Chelsea as he had adjusted well, but the departure of Jose Mourinho and the arrival of Nicolas Anelka saw him being surplus to requirements. By the end of the season, he had scored just two goals in 32 games for Chelsea.
He returned to Werder Bremen on loan in the next season and enjoyed a productive season after which the move was made permanent.
#8 Yuri Zhirkov
Roman Abramovich has always had a soft spot for Russian players and hence it was no surprise when Chelsea paid £18 million pounds for Zhirkov in 2009. This also made Zhirkov the most expensive Russian player of all time.
Zhirkov did put in some impressive performances for Chelsea during his two seasons at the club, but he found regular playing time hard to come by due to the impressive performance of Ashley Cole at left-back. This meant that Zhirkov often played in unfamiliar positions in the midfield or on the wings.
Chelsea sold Zhirkov to Anzhi makhachkala in 2011 for £13.2 million. The Russian played 48 times for the club in two full seasons, winning the Premier League, FA Cup and the Community Shield.
#7 Ricardo Quaresma
Quaresma is renowned for his speed, flair and finesse which can cause a lot of trouble to the opposition defense and the winger is also very famous for his Rabona assists.
The Portuguese had successful stints at clubs like Sporting, Barcelona and Porto, and in 2008, he moved to Internazionale. He did not have a good spell at Inter and after being left out of Inter’s squad for the knockout stages of the Champions League, he left the club on loan to Chelsea.
Quaresma announced that he was happier at Chelsea than he was at Inter, but he couldn’t break into the Chelsea first team and left the club at the end of the season, having made just five appearances, without scoring a goal. He moved several clubs after this and eventually returned to Porto, where he is now a regular.
#6 Daniel Sturridge
Chelsea signed Daniel Sturridge amidst controversy after his contract with Manchester City expired. He spent three and a half years at Chelsea, during which he went on loan to Bolton Wanderers for half a season.
Sturridge rarely played for Chelsea as a striker and most of his appearances were off the bench. After little playing time at Chelsea over the years even after the departure of Drogba and the poor performance of Fernando Torres, the Englishman left Chelsea in January 2013 to sign for Liverpool. He quickly established himself as a star at Liverpool and scored on his club debut, his league debut and his Anfield debut.
Sturridge also became the fastest Liverpool player to score 30 Premier League goals by beating the likes of Luis Suarez, Robbie Fowler, Fernando Torres and Michael Owen. He was also given his preferred striker role at Liverpool.
#5 Yossi Benayoun
Benayoun was an underrated talent during his time with West Ham and then Liverpool. The Israeli midfielder spent three seasons at the Merseyside club and enjoyed success on a personal level. He played 48 times in his first season at the club and scored 11 times. In 2009, he scored the only goal at Santiago Bernabeu as Liverpool defeated Real Madrid and till date he remains the only player to have scored a hat-trick in the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup.
In 2010, he signed for Chelsea, but he ruptured his achilles early on in the season and recovered only towards the end of the season.
Chelsea loaned Benayoun to Arsenal for the 2011/12 season where he had a decent spell and scored a very important goal for the club in the last game he played for them as a result of which Arsenal won their final league game 3-2 against West Brom and finished a point ahead of fourth placed Tottenham Hotspur. This was crucial because Spurs couldn’t play in the Champions League in the next season as Chelsea had finished outside the top 4 and had won the Champions League, so qualified as title holders.
He was loaned to West Ham for the 2012/13 season, but it was cut short due to an injury and he returned to Chelsea and played the remainder of the season under his former manager Rafa Benitez.
Benayoun left Chelsea after his contract expired in 2013 and made just 24 appearances for the club, which is one less than the number of games he played for Arsenal while on loan there.
#4 Marko Marin
German International Marko Marin was once labeled as the ‘German Messi’; such was the hype surrounding the youngster during his playing days at Borussia Monchengladbach and Werder Bremen.
So when Chelsea signed him in 2012, big things were expected from the German. But he picked up a hamstring injury during pre-season and managed to make only a handful of substitute appearances in the first half of the season and his first start came on 2nd January 2013 in a loss against QPR.
When Jose Mourinho returned to Stamford Bridge, Chelsea signed several attacking players, and so Marin was loaned out to Sevilla. He played 30 times for the Spanish club in all competitions last season and netted just twice (in a Europa league game). He returned to Chelsea and went out on loan again, this time to Fiorentina, where he is yet to play a league game for the Viola.
#3 Juan Sebastian Veron
When Juan Sebastian Veron moved to Manchester United in 2001, he was the most expensive signing by an English club at that time. The Argentine had made a name for himself in Italy prior to his move and thus warranted the hefty fee that United paid.
His time at Old Trafford was unsuccessful and he is considered to be one of Alex Ferguson’s worst transfers, despite Ferguson advocating the fact that he was a great player. Two years later when Abramovich bought Chelsea, the Blues paid £15 million for Veron, which was nearly half the money Manchester United paid for him.
Veron made an excellent start to his Chelsea career, but soon faded away due to injuries and managed just 15 appearances for them. When Jose Mourinho took charge of Chelsea, Veron was loaned out to Internazionale.
The Times listed Veron’s transfer to Manchester Untied and Chelsea amongst the 50 worst transfers in the Premier League.
#2 Andriy Shevchenko
Shevchenko is arguably the best footballer to have come from Ukraine. The striker was very prolific in front of goal and won the Ballon d’Or in 2004 while playing for AC Milan. He spent seven years with the Milanese club and amassed 175 goals in 296 games and his goal scoring record also made him the second highest scorer for Milan.
In 2006, Shevchenko left Milan for Chelsea and in the process became the most expensive signing by an English club (at that time). The Soviet connection between Abramovich and Shevchenko was one of the reasons why the move went through.
The Ukrainian scored sporadically in his first season at the club and finished with a total of just 14 goals from 51 games. This was a poor return for a player of Shevchenko’s quality and his second season was marred with injuries. Things didn’t improve further in his third season as he was in and out of the side due to injuries and poor form.
Prior to the 2008/09 season, he was deemed surplus to requirements after the arrival of new manager Luiz Felipe Scolari and was eventually loaned back to his old club AC Milan.
His second spell with Milan was unsuccessful as he scored just 2 goals in 26 appearances with no goals in the Serie A. The Ukrainian never re-discovered his old goal scoring prowess and in the end he was sold to his first club Dynamo Kyiv.
#1 Fernando Torres
There were no doubts about the number 1 position, because Fernando Torres is easily one of the biggest failed transfers in the history of the game. Torres came to England with a huge reputation and lived up to it after he joined Liverpool in 2007. The Spaniard produced mouthwatering performances for the club and in 2008 he was named third in the Ballon d’Or poll.
The former Atletico Madrid captain had some injury concerns during his time at Liverpool, but he found the back of the net regularly when he played. In January 2011, Torres handed in a transfer request at Liverpool due to the very poor situation the club were in at that time.
Liverpool accepted his request and on deadline day, he made a £50 million move to rivals Chelsea and the move also made him the most expensive player signed by an English club (which was broken when Di Maria signed for Manchester United).
It took Torres 903 minutes of football to score his first goal for Chelsea and that was his only goal in 18 games for Chelsea, in his debut season. He did score some important goals for the Blues, but by the end of the 2013/14 season, he had scored just 45 goals in 172 appearances for them, whereas he had scored 81 goals for Liverpool in just 142 appearances
Chelsea eventually lost their patience with Torres and loaned him out to AC Milan for the ongoing season, but Torres has just scored once in nine games for Milan so far.
