Arsenal FC's 10 Most Curious Signings

Arsenal are generally regarded as one of the better teams in transfer dealings. Of course, Arsene Wenger is infamous for his austerity and penny-pinching, but the club always manages to find bargains who grossly outperform what their transfer fee would suggest.

Yet, the process of evaluating and signing players is far from an exact science, and even a team of Arsenal's caliber gets some decisions horribly wrong at times.

Occasionally, the club will make a signing that leaves many fans scratching their heads, only for the same individuals to be pumping their fists when another unearthed Wenger gem shines.

Here, we look back at 10 of those men, who contributed either positively or negatively to the club in their time at Arsenal.

Mikael Silvestre

Almost from the day he arrived from Manchester United at the gates of the Emirates Stadium, Mikael Silvestre was a disaster.

Slow, cumbersome and well past his prime, the Frenchman was quite a liability in defence, and bad things just seemed to happen when he was on the pitch.

Silvestre's positional sense was abysmal, and every time he was forced to get involved in defensive play, Arsenal fans would cringe at the thought of attackers exploiting the defender's many weaknesses.

One of many that Wenger held onto for far too long, he was only released on a free transfer after numerous hideous displays.

Pascal Cygan

Cygan was actually quite a versatile player, and used his ability to play both left- and center-back to frequently earn at least a bench place in the famous Invincibles side of 2003-04.

But few players during Arsene Wenger's reign have been worse fits for the manager's style of play than Cygan.

He looked extremely clumsy and awkward on a football pitch—especially with the ball at his feet. Similar to the case of Mikael Silvestre after him, the Emirates Stadium was overwhelmed by a palpable sense of anxiety whenever Cygan found himself on or near the ball.

Jermaine Pennant

Pennant was one of those classic, unfortunate cases of how a vastly over-hyped young player, especially an English one, can lose his way and ultimately fail to find success with the club that initially signed him.

Plucked at just 15 years old amid much fanfare, the young attacker was touted as a future England star. But behavioral problems beset the youngster during his progression through the ranks at Arsenal, and he ended up making only a handful of appearances for Arsenal.

Oddly, his three goals scored for the club were all netted in the same match, which was his full debut against Southampton on May 7, 2003. That would, unfortunately, be the high point of his Arsenal career.

Cesc Fabregas

No one will dispute the fact that the signing of Cesc Fabregas from Barcelona in 2003 was hugely beneficial to Arsenal, but it was one of the odder signings of the Arsene Wenger era.

Here was arguably the most obscure find the manager had made: plucked from La Masia before he could even sign professional terms in Spain. At the age of 16, fans did not care much about the diminutive kid who had seemingly randomly joined the club's youth academy.

But the rest, as we now know, is history.

Arguably the oddest and most random signing of the Wenger era turned into easily one of the best.

Jose Antonio Reyes

The curious case of Jose Antonio Reyes is simultaneously interesting and disappointing.

Here was a boy who had so much talent in his left boot and so much room to expand at a club that truly wanted him to cultivate his talents within its pitches. But the player did not show the same unbridled affection for the club he was playing at or, indeed, the country in which he was playing.

Like other Valencians, Reyes felt an intense connection to his homeland and could not shake the homesickness that ultimately saw his performances suffer and get him a move back to Spain after a couple promising seasons in North London.

One truly gets the feeling that Reyes could have accomplish great things if he had just stayed and given all that he could to fulfill his potential.

Andrei Arshavin

Back in 2009, almost nobody expected Andrei Arshavin to arrive at Arsenal. After all, conventional wisdom held that what the Gunners needed, as they so often do, was a tall, strong, imposing central defender—not a petite, tricky winger.

Yet, in typical fashion, Arsene Wenger flaunted the influence of the entire footballing universe and paid a club record transfer fee to secure Arshavin's services from Zenit St. Petersburg in the dying seconds of the January transfer window.

Initially, Arshavin was a sensation, scoring a spectacular quadruple against Liverpool at Anfield and terrorizing the Premier League with Messi-like play.

However, the little Russian's play and motivation have frequently been the subject of as much curiosity as was his signing, and his repeated failure to contribute anything positive to the team has seen him loaned back to Zenit for the remainder of the season.

Sebastien Squillaci

In the summer of 2010, Arsene Wenger finally did sign a defender. But it was not at all what people expected or wanted, and what ensued at the back can only be described as a defensive debacle.

Acquired from Monaco for a measly few million pounds, Sebastien Squillaci was supposed to bring experience, leadership and, believe it or not, physicality to the Arsenal defence.

It’s reasonably safe to say that Arsenal got none of those things.

Instead, goals just seemed to flow in whenever the Frenchman was on the pitch and, though he technically remains a part of the first-team squad, the manager has completely lost faith in the man he trusted with the captain's armband on one occasion.

Manuel Almunia

Oh, Manuel Almunia. Merely repeating the name in my head gives me uncomfortable heart palpitations, and I am forced to relax myself and think of Wojciech Szczesny.

For the past eight years, the Spanish shot-stopper has been committing hilarious error after hilarious error, proving his extreme mental fragility and maddening inconsistency.

His signing was also one of the most unexpected of the Arsene Wenger era. Almost none had heard his name when it was announced that he was plucked from Spanish minnows Celta Vigo to eventually be Jens Lehmann’s successor.

Finally, finally, Arsene Wenger realizes that, as long as he cannot get a team to take Almunia off his hands, he must keep him as far away from the Emirates Stadium as possible.

Francis Jeffers

What an unmitigated disaster Francis Jeffers’ time was at Arsenal.

The Englishman was signed for over eight million pounds from Everton in 2001 to be the “fox in the box” that Arsenal needed—despite the fact that the Gunners already had Sylvain Wiltord and some guy named Henry.

He eventually accumulated only a handful of appearances and was completely frozen out of the first-team picture at Arsenal, before finally being offloaded to Charlton at a several million pound loss.

These sorts of massive miscalculations in player evaluations are extremely atypical for Arsene Wenger and his staff.

Ju-Young Park

I think it’s nearly impossible for anyone to understand why this signing even happened in the first place, due to the way in which the unfortunate Park has been treated.

Stolen from under the noses of Lille during the final days of last summer’s transfer window (much to the French champion's anger), the South Korean was supposed to provide valuable cover to Robin van Persie and a respected late-game weapon off the bench once he got acclimated to the Premier League.

Either after eight months, Park cannot due so, or there is something else at play here. While it is impossible to oust Van Persie from the starting XI this season, Arsene Wenger has only given the striker two very brief Premier League cameos, in addition to a smattering of Carling Cup matches earlier in the season.

If you are going to sign a player merely to watch him rot on the bench, it begs the question: Why did you sign him in the first place?

It is one that is extremely difficult to answer, and is why Park is one of the most curious signings during the reign of Arsene Wenger.