10 Biggest Flops of the Premier League Season so Far
We’re just over halfway into the Premier League season, and teams are looking to take stock and use the January transfer window to add to their squads for the run in.
Some teams will need more bolstering than others. This list will discuss 10 players who so far have simply failed to justify their arrivals last summer.
These players are ranked in terms of their fee, their club’s respective spending power (£10 million is much more for Leicester City than it is for Chelsea), their performance so far and their anticipated impact and importance to the team when they were signed.
Honourable Mentions
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Five players who didn’t quite make the top ten are Liverpool pair Lazar Markovic and Rickie Lambert, Chelsea’s Filipe Luis, Sunderland’s Jack Rodwell and Southampton’s Shane Long.
Markovic has begun to show signs of the talent that led Brendan Rodgers to spend £20 million on the attacker, culminating in his match-winning performance against Sunderland. Lambert has done relatively little at Anfield, but commanded a small transfer fee and was only really expected to be an impact player.
Luis has failed to unseat Cesar Azpilicueta in the Chelsea left-back spot, but his fee of £16 million will have hardly made a dent in Roman Abramovich's pockets.
At £10 million, Rodwell was by far Sunderland’s most expensive signing of the summer and, like Markovic, he is beginning to rediscover the form which led to Manchester City signing him back in 2012.
Long has done little to justify his £12 million fee in terms of goalscoring, but his enterprising playing style—and the fact he was bought as a back-up to Graziano Pelle and Sadio Mane—means he doesn’t quite make the list.
10. Radamel Falcao
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Fee: £6 million (loan fee)
Radamel Falcao may have cost Manchester United very little in terms of his loan fee, but his wages—£265,000 a week, per The Telegraph—more than make up for that. The Daily Mail reports that it will cost United £43 million to make the Colombian’s move permanent in the summer, and he has never looked like justifying that sort of outlay.
While he hasn’t been particularly poor, he has struggled with the pace of the league, and has scored just three times in 13 appearances in all competitions. For the wages alone, which make him the league’s highest-paid player, the Red Devils would have hoped for a better return.
9. Wilfried Zaha
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Fee: Loan
Few players have gone off the boil so dramatically as Wilfried Zaha has in the last couple of seasons. His scintillating form at Crystal Palace in their promotion season led to Manchester United paying £10 million for his services in 2013, but since then he has never looked like hitting the same heights.
His loan back to Palace is his second spell away from Old Trafford (not including the time he spent at Palace immediately after his move to United), and he has been as disappointing at Selhurst Park as he was at Cardiff City last season. He now has his work cut out to prove he wasn’t just a flash in the pan.
8. Rio Ferdinand
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Fee: £0
While several other Queens Park Rangers signings were in the running, none have failed as badly as Rio Ferdinand. Signed on a free, the veteran is still commanding a hefty wage packet—the Daily Mail reports his salary to be around a third of what he earned at Manchester United, which is still close to £70,000 per week.
For a club in such a perilous financial position, they would have been hoping that a player of Ferdinand’s experience would play a pivotal role in their relegation battle. Instead, Ferdinand has looked woefully ill-equipped to deal with the pace of the Premier League, particularly when asked to play in a back three.
The fact he has played just once in the league since October shows just how poor he has been.
7. Hatem Ben Arfa
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Fee: Loan
Few clubs have fared as badly as Hull City have in terms of new recruits. I wrote in September of how much of a risk Steve Bruce was taking in the transfer market, and it appears that the gamble simply hasn’t paid off.
Hatem Ben Arfa has well and truly lived up to his billing as a flawed genius. A wonderful player on his day, his career has been derailed by injuries and his poor attitude.
Little changed under the tutelage of Bruce, who severed ties with the Frenchman after finding he had covered less ground than goalkeeper Allan McGregor in the first half against Manchester United.
6. Tom Ince
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Fee: £0 (compensation up to £8 million)
Much like Zaha, Tom Ince’s star burned brightly but now threatens to be extinguished entirely. Having lit up the Championship with Blackpool last season, he appeared to have his pick of clubs, with Ajax and Inter both heavily linked with the winger, per the Mirror.
His decision to choose Hull over Milan and Amsterdam appeared slightly strange at the time, but perhaps it was an act of humility, an acknowledgement that he was nowhere near ready for the level of those clubs.
He was quickly found wanting by Steve Bruce, despite Hull’s desperate need for reinforcements up front. He was sent out on loan at Nottingham Forest, where he had an equally torrid time, but returned to his parent club for the December fixture pile-up.
5. Leonardo Ulloa
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Fee: £8 million
Leonardo Ulloa was the Foxes’ record transfer in the summer but has been a major disappointment, failing to adapt to the Premier League from life in the Championship.
He began the season very well, scoring five goals in his first five games. However, Leicester’s form quickly faded, as did Ulloa’s. He has scored just twice in the last 16 league games as the team sunk to the bottom of the table.
The fact that Nigel Pearson has decided to splash around £10 million on Andrej Kramaric speaks volumes about Ulloa’s diminishing returns.
4. Abel Hernandez
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Fee: £10 million
Similarly to Ulloa, Abel Hernandez’s time in the Premier League began promisingly, with three goals in six games. His time in east Yorkshire has been disrupted by injury, and he’s only made eight league appearances since, failing to score in any of them.
He still has time to come good, but he is expected to be out of action until February with an adductor muscle problem, per the BBC, and his goalscoring record throughout his career has been patchy at best. With Hull looking increasingly desperate for goals, there’ll be no respite from the pressure for the Uruguayan.
3. Mario Balotelli
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Fee: £16 million
There’s little to say about Mario Balotelli that hasn’t already been said. Brought in as a replacement for Luis Suarez, the Italian was never going to be an exact match for the all-action Uruguayan. However, Brendan Rodgers would have hoped for a more significant contribution from the former Manchester City player.
Balotelli has managed 760 minutes in the league for the Reds, but has failed to find the net once. Even worse was the destabilising effect he had on the team’s attacking philosophy, which simply couldn’t accommodate a striker with little mobility.
In fairness, the £16 million fee wasn’t particularly costly for Liverpool, and Balotelli hasn’t been helped by the pressure placed upon him by Daniel Sturridge’s absence. He may yet prove his worth.
2. Brown Ideye
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Fee: £10 million
Ranked by WhoScored as one of West Bromwich Albion’s worst performers, Brown Ideye cost a massive £10 million and is the club’s record signing, demonstrating just how important the Baggies deemed him to be.
Just one goal and a paltry 577 minutes of Premier League action later, and the Nigerian is already looking like a colossal mistake—one which could spell the difference between Premier League survival and relegation.
His failings have been masked by the form of Saido Berahino, but should he leave in January, there will be nowhere for Ideye to hide.
1. Dejan Lovren
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Fee: £20 million
Liverpool may have begun to recapture the form that saw them finish second last term, but it’s extremely telling that they have done so largely without any help from central defender Dejan Lovren.
The Croatian was signed for a hefty £20 million, after being identified as the remedy for the Reds’ defensive woes. However, he has arguably caused more issues than he has resolved.
Southampton’s continued defensive stoicism suggests that other players—particularly Jose Fonte—carried Lovren, and not the other way around.
