Liverpool's Most Curious Signings Ever

All football clubs make good and bad signings, and while they will always set out to make good ones, sometimes they can bring a player to the club and leave observers asking themselves: "Why have they done that?"

These players may turn out to be a pleasant surprise or they could end up disappointing their manager and supporters, but often the sense of shock that greets their arrival never really goes away.

Liverpool have made some interesting signings over the years, some good, some bad and some downright confusing.

There will be plenty of names that the club's fans choose to remember―either for the right or the wrong reasons―but here are just 10 arrivals listed in chronological order that will strike a chord with Reds followers, starting off with one who certainly packed a punch...

Joe Louis

Doncaster Rovers' signing of One Direction singer Louis Tomlinson has made the headlines this summer, but Liverpool can boast of a more famous Louis on their books.

Joe Louis―nicknamed "The Brown Bomber" ―was a world heavyweight champion between 1937 and 1949 and is widely regarded as one of the greatest boxers in history.

On a promotional visit to England in 1944, the Alabama-born Louis signed for Liverpool as a player, becoming officially registered on the club's books.

Of course he never played for the Reds, but the club could at least lay claim to one of football's most convincing "hard men."

Tony Hateley

Spending a club record fee on a tall, powerful striker who would struggle to fit into the team’s system. Sound familiar?

Long before Andy Carroll, Liverpool boss Bill Shankly made the somewhat surprising decision in the summer of 1967 to break Liverpool’s transfer record to sign forward Tony Hateley for £96,000 from Chelsea―who themselves had broken their own record to snap up the forward from Aston Villa for £100,000 less than a year previously.

Thriving on crosses and long balls, Hateley had struggled to adapt to Chelsea’s passing game, but that didn’t deter Shankly from making the move, only for history to repeat itself.

The forward still managed 27 goals over the season, but Shankly didn’t like the way his presence had altered the approach of his team, and Hateley was shipped off to Coventry City after just a year at the club.

Paul Ince

Liverpool have had plenty of “missing pieces of the jigsaw” over the years―that special player who was supposedly destined to come to the club and transform them from title pretenders to title winners.

One of the most intriguing was Paul Ince, a two-time Premier League winner at Manchester United who had swapped Old Trafford for the San Siro when he moved to Inter Milan in 1995.

Ince had been a spiky presence in the United midfield for six years, but that didn’t stop Liverpool moving for him in 1997, just when most pundits were claiming that he was just the sort of player they needed to become less of a soft touch in the centre of the park.

Installed as a frequent captain of the team, Ince would play for the Reds for two years.

Supporters turned on him for his request to be substituted in an FA Cup match at Old Trafford in 1999, which the Reds lost 2-1 having led 1-0; Ince did score having led 1-0 against former club United at Anfield later in the year, though, celebrating wildly as he rammed some unkind words from his former manager Alex Ferguson back down the Scot’s throat.

But with the likes of Steven Gerrard emerging through the ranks, Ince left for Middlesbrough later that year―the jigsaw remaining uncompleted.

Jean-Michel Ferri

Midfielder Jean-Michel Ferri was 29 and past his best when he arrived at Liverpool from Turkish club Istanbulspor in 1998, just two weeks after Gerard Houllier had assumed sole control of the Reds.

Ferri had admittedly been a key player in the Nantes team that won the French League in 1995, but there was speculation that Houllier merely signed him so he could have a French presence in the dressing room­―his "eyes and ears" if you will.

The midfielder would play just two games for the Reds―defeats at Chelsea and Sheffield Wednesday in which he clocked up almost 50 minutes on the pitch.

He left for Sochaux in the summer of 1999, with his slightly odd presence all but forgotten about immediately.

Nick Barmby

Liverpool boss Houllier was eager to make a statement of intent in the summer of 2000, and masterminding Liverpool’s first signing from Everton in 41 years certainly did that.

Not since the now sadly departed Dave Hickson in 1959 had a player directly swapped Goodison Park for Anfield, but Barmby changed all that with a move that hit the headlines. “You are speaking as though he has changed religion,” said Houllier at the midfielder’s introductory press conference, such was the intense questioning.

Barmby was to play a part as the Reds won the FA Cup, League Cup and UEFA Cup in his first season at the club, scoring in all three competitions. It was in the Premier League where he really made his mark, though, with his headed goal against Everton just 12 minutes into his first meeting with them as a Liverpool player proving to be the type of moment that Merseyside dreams are made of.

Injury restricted him the following season, though, and with Houllier opting to bring in further midfield signings in the summer of 2002 Barmby was offloaded to Leeds United having created quite a stir at Anfield after his arrival.

Gary McAllister

There was widespread disbelief among Liverpool fans when manager Gerard Houllier completed his free transfer move for Gary McAllister from Coventry City in the summer of 2000, not because of the player's quality, but because he was now 35 years old.

The Scot had enjoyed a fine Premier League career with Leeds United and Coventry over the previous decade, but there were serious doubts over whether or not he could make a difference in a midfield featuring much younger talents in Steven Gerrard and Danny Murphy.

In the event, such doubts were quickly washed away.

McAllister enjoyed a fine 2000/01 campaign, really coming to life at the tail end of it when he scored a stunning stoppage-time free-kick winner in a Merseyside derby, hit the winner from the penalty spot against Barcelona in the UEFA Cup semi-final and then scored another penalty in the final victory over Alaves in Dortmund, where he was also named man of the match.

He had a reduced role the following campaign, after which he left to rejoin Coventry with his status as a Reds hero secured.

 

Abel Xavier

Markus Babbel’s debilitating illness had left the Reds needing a new right-back to aid in their title challenge in the winter of the 2001/02 season, but few expected them to get one from across Stanley Park.

Abel Xavier had spent three years at Everton before a shock £800,000 move to Liverpool in late January 2002, with the Portuguese defender―who had never scored for Everton in 49 appearances for the Blues―compounding the bizarre nature of his move by opening the scoring 16 minutes into his Reds debut, a 6-0 win at Ipswich that put Liverpool top of the table.

A distinctive figure given his bleached-blond hair, Xavier played 21 times for the Reds all-in-all, scoring again in the madcap Champions League exit at the hands of Bayer Leverkusen in April 2002.

He left for Galatasaray a year later having done a reasonable job, albeit with many still wondering just why he’d been signed in the first place.

Robbie Fowler

In January 2006 Liverpool were in need of some more firepower to add to their attacking options of Djibril Cisse, Peter Crouch and Fernando Morientes.

In normal circumstances a move for an ageing, somewhat unfit soon-to-be 31-year-old who was struggling to get a game at Manchester City would hardly be welcomed, but these were hardly normal circumstances.

In a move that had been nothing more than a whisper on the Merseyside grapevine for weeks, Rafael Benitez completed a stunning swoop to bring Robbie Fowler back to the Reds on a free transfer.

The fan favourite returned to Anfield over four years after he left, adding 12 goals to his tally of 183 for the club.

Although never a regular in the team during his second coming, Reds fans were delighted to have the man they call “God” back among them, and he remained at the club until departing for a second time in the summer of 2007.

Paul Konchesky

A manager moving to a new club and immediately recruiting one of the trusted lieutenants from his old job might not seem that curious, but it was the manner of Roy Hodgson’s signing of Paul Konchesky from Fulham in the summer of 2010 that didn’t quite sit right with many Liverpool fans.

Instead of the new Reds boss evaluating some of the club’s top young talents, Hodgson immediately shipped out promising duo Lauri Della Valle and Alex Kacaniklic―along with around £3.5 million―to the Cottagers in return for the 29-year-old Konchesky, who had also been nothing more than a steady if average left-back.

It smacked of short-term thinking from the soon-to-be unpopular Liverpool manager, and it wasn’t helped by the immediate struggles of Konchesky, who scored against the Reds for West Ham in the 2006 FA Cup Final.

He would make just 18 appearances for Liverpool and was shipped out on loan to Nottingham Forest just weeks after the departure of Hodgson in January 2011.

Andy Carroll

The closing hours of the January 2011 transfer window were among the more chaotic Liverpool have experienced.

Luis Suarez arrived from Ajax―with his chaos scheduled for a later date―before Fernando Torres departed for Chelsea for a staggering £50 million, still the largest amount a British club has paid for a player.

What came next was truly astonishing though, as the Reds splashed out £35m of the Torres money on Newcastle's impressive but undoubtedly raw 22-year-old forward Andy Carroll, a player who was scheduled to be a target the following summer but whose purchase had been rushed forward―and at an incredibly inflated price.

Carroll was somewhat onto a hiding to nothing after that, and although football's most expensive ever Englishman showed a glimpse of his potential early on with two goals and a dominating performance against Manchester City, injuries and a struggle for form always affected him.

He scored the winner in Liverpool's FA Cup semi-final win over Everton in 2011/12, before notching in the final defeat to Chelsea, however the arrival of Brendan Rodgers as manager led to him being frozen out, and after a loan switch to West Ham he completed a permanent transfer to the Irons this summer.