NEWSNOW£100 Million wasted on crap Players! Tottenham, Aston Villa, Man City, Liverpool
Darren Bent, Michael Chopra, Rolando Bianchi… Mike Norman runs though £100m worth of players who just haven’t made the grade in the Premiership this season
That Harry Redknapp fella didn’t always have an eye for a good bargain you know. Cast your minds back to the summer of 1995 when West Ham United spent around £1m on Dutchman Marco Boogers. The story goes that Redknapp hadn’t even seen Boogers play, and the striker was only signed after a few videos were shown to the manager – videos of what we must now ask ourselves.
We all know what happened; Boogers made just two substitute appearances for the Hammers, with the second resulting in a straight red card after a horrific two footed tackle on Gary Neville (so it was justified then). He never played for the club again and went back to his homeland to live in a caravan for a while. I wonder if Thomas Brolin will ever be found camping in Sweden, or whether Franny Jeffers is planning to live at Butlins at some point – just two more of the Premiership’s worst ever signings.
The current season has had its fair share of poor signings too – I mean, whoever thought Jose Enrique was worth more than £6m wants sacking! Enrique wasn’t the only poor signing however; I can easily name £100m worth of Premiership footballers, who quite frankly, have been major disappointments – so that’s £94m to go then.
Tottenham’s Darren Bent isn’t really a bad player, he’s just a terrible signing at £16.5m. He has proved he can score goals at this level, but why pay so much for a player who you are going to use sparingly – whoever signed him wants sacking – sorry, I’ve already used that line. Bent has scored just three Premiership goals this season (against Boro, Wigan & Derby) and you just can’t see him playing often enough to add many more to that tally. No doubt he’d love to play on Sunday, with Spurs being available at [3.9] to beat Chelsea in 90 minutes, or [2.5] to win the Carling Cup outright.
Sunderland have made some decent signings this season, who will all be justified if they avoid relegation, but you would have to say that the £5m they paid for Michael Chopra and the £3.5m they paid for Greg Halford now looks bad. Chopra became an instant hero at the Stadium of Light when he scored a last ditch goal against Spurs on the opening day of the season, but he’s only added two more goals to his tally and doesn’t look good enough at this level. Halford made just eight league appearances for the Wearsiders and is now out on loan at Charlton. Sunderland are going in the right direction, and they are now out to [6.6] to be relegated.
You have to admit that West Ham have been the unlucky team. They spent over £26m on four players (Craig Bellamy, Kieron Dyer, Scott Parker & Julien Faubert), yet all four have had bad injuries that have prevented them from playing most of the season. Does this make them bad signings though? Well £26m for decent players that aren’t playing, I’d say yes – but let me know what you think. Would the Hammers be any further up the table if they had a fully fit squad? They are still available at [10.5] if you think they can put a run together and reach the top six.
So that’s around £50m of poor Premiership signings – where’s the other £50m coming from? Let’s start with Rolando Bianchi who cost Man City £8.8m – he’s now back playing in Italy. Or we could start with Marlon Harewood at £4m – he hasn’t started a league game for Villa yet. And what about poor David Nugent, who cost Portsmouth £6m – he was so bad they tried to sell him as soon as he arrived. At least these clubs are still fighting for a UEFA Cup slot, so it’s not all bad. To finish in the top six, Man City are available at [2.72], Villa at [1.95] and Portsmouth at [4.1].
So I’m still about £30m short. How about Mido (£6m) at Boro, Diomansy Kamara (£6m) at Fulham, Alan Smith (£6m) and Joey Barton (£5.8m) at Newcastle and Emerse Fae (£2.5m) at Reading – all have turned out to be poor signings in my opinion. As for the final £3.5m, I’ll put up Derby’s not so prolific striker Robert Earnshaw – now, whoever signed him really does want sacking!
Written by bradsmith
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Yes, West Ham’s signings have been awful. Being given money to spend and buying 4 players who have no interest in playing for West Ham apart from the money is criminal. Bellamy and Dyer are a waste of space and Parker is just throwing his career down the toliet. Add Neill – one of the worst defenders in the premiership – and Boa Morte, Davenport etc. and the Hammers have thrown away millions recently. And now it appears the money has run out.
Sorry but Craig Bellamy,Kieron Dyer and Scott Parker fall in the crap injury prone over priced cos they’re English category.
What a load of crap Mr.Frost. Neill was great last season and has started to get back to something approaching his best form. Bellamy, Dyer and Parker have been injured so how you can say they don’t want to play for West Ham is beyond me. Unless of course you are just one of those sad Spud fans who trawls the West Ham sites to throw abuse and has very little knowledge of what he speaks.
Harewood was initially looked upon as a waste of money by Villa fans, but hes quickly becoming a firm fan favourite after recent performances off the bench, hopefully he will start his first game on Sunday at Reading. So i wouldn’t call him a waste of money.
How any West Ham can say that Darren Bent is a bad signing is beyond me. Are you still upset that he chose Spurs over you? Didn’t you guys try and buy him for the same money? Plus you offered more wages!
I tottally agree with adam i was thinkin Oneil had lost the plot payin 4 million for Harewood, especially after the spurs game but in the past couple of games he has been a revelation!! BARGAIN!!
To be honset IstanbulHammer as much fun and as easy it would be to go through the Wet Spams websites and throw abuse around. This website came up on newsnow because our name is in the title.
Lucas Neill is pants…..!!
He has been terrible all season, he might be playing marginally better at the moment, but he has been roasted on several occasions this season by players with a slight bit of pace.
Very over rated player.
No way has Harewood been a flop, whenever he’s played he’s been a breath of fresh air for us and no doubt will he be worth the money.
Feed the Hare and he will score!
Bianchi is a very good player who didn’t settle in England and found the prem difficult to adjust to. As he is desperately trying to get into the Italian squad for the Euros, and was wanted by 3 or 4 clubs in Italy who were all willing to sign him for what City paid for him, it was common sense to let him go on loan with a view to a permanent deal. Crap? Waste of money? Not really. He was a young prospect on the verge of the Italian team and fitted Sven’s profile. It didn’t work out for him but at least he played well and looked good.
And of course carl you couldnt resist spewing out deluded comments that lack originality aswell well as sense.If you want to have a wind up by thinking its fun to go around west ham sites then you must have crap sites of your own that have the excitement of a tumbleweed blowing across a desserted town
How can anyone say that players haven’t justified their transfer fees when they have been injured? If these players had been playing well the same people would be saying they were bargain buys. Dyer didn’t ask for a lower league player to break his leg. Parker and Bellamy have been great in the odd matches they have played. Faubert also looks the biz and has done well in the reserves on his return to fitness. These guys have hardly been flops.
Carl, Darren Bent was a bad signing because of the price tag. All West Ham fans breathed a sigh of relief when it fell through with West Ham because we all knew he wasn’t worth that. The chairman then admitted perhaps it would have been a mistake to sign him on these terms. As for wages no-one knows how much we offered him, this is never made public knowledge and anyone who claims they know is lying. I can’t see any logic behind him turning down West Ham to go to Spurs for half the wage, especially when he spoke to us first. The chances are we both offered him the same or very similar deals but he decided to go to Spurms to boost his England career by playing in Europe.
So let’s not believe the press too much eh? We’ll see just how good West Ham’s signing’s are when they maintain match fitness long enough to get some games under their belt.
I tend to agree with you West_Ham Lizard.. But you have to agree a few of our players have been dissapointing, but as for Parker and Solano, brilliant players.
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the days are long gone when there were players at the club that did not want to play for west ham. This present team have fantastic spirit-remember the great escape? and I can assure you they ALL want to play for west ham(when they are all fit) and stay ABOVE those spuds!
sorry but we like Harewood now
In all fairness you can argue all villa summer signings were crap and not really inspiring to us villains. however, he’s been doing well from the bench and does offer problems when he does come on and play…
and don’t worry about the injured players, Martin Laursen went nearly three years without playing for us -injuries happen and it’s the quality that counts. Parker is a quality player, don’t know about Faubert yet, Dyer is a problem for most defences when at his best, and even Bowyer can do a good job if he stays out of trouble…
I have to agree with the original article about West Ham wasting millions.
Faubert was very unlucky but what did Curbs expect with the other 3? They’ve all spent more time on the treatment table than the pitch in recent seasons.. I mean Dyer has legs made of glass! Parker only plays a handful of games a year…
People who criticize Lucas Neill don’t know what they’re talking about. He runs the defence. Anton is twice the player when he’s on the pitch. We saw it last year. After Neill turned up we stopped leaking goals. He’s as much to thank as Teves was.
He’s playing better in recent weeks, BigFatJulian because he’s got a world class player like Freddie L in front of him to play off of.
Gotta say you’ve all over looked the most obvious poor signing of Freddie “ooh I’ve got a migraine can I sit this one out” Ljungberg – past sell by and staggering wages !!
No sour grapes over Bent – the guys only worth 6 mill, and I nearly shit my keks when I heard we were going to pay 17 mill for an average player – thank god for the Oven Dodger mugs.
As for the Harewood issue – think we could have done with him – the guy to his credit would have bagged far more goals than Carlton permanent goal drought.
Does anybody know whats happened to Alan Smith – the bloke just looks like a 6 foot peroxide ponce who wants to start a fight – the gezzer seems to have regressed to a state of sunday pub league ability – easily the biggest waste of 6 mill this season.
Players can have lapses in form,be unable to fit in with the team plan,not get on with their team mates,and may not be played to their strengths,it happens,
It certainly doesnt mean that they are “crap”.
Cliff Ette meets Chaucer
lets just sum it up in a nutshell:we have been up n down like a fiddlers elbow for years,but now we have a owner and a manager who is going to push us forward,but this wont happen over night.All us hammers fans want europe and champions league,but we have to be patient,as difficult as that is…lets not sound like the spuds.And for gods sake lets raise the roof at the boleyn,after what we went thru last season surely we are all toughenend up enough to know we entering better times and dont have to be worried about relegation anymore
Stav,
It’s probably a little unfair to put Bellamy in the “Over-priced because he’s English” catagory, as I think you’ll find he’s Welsh.
I agree lots of money wasted on crap players….But for me the best buy of the season is Martin Petrov (4.5 mill Man City).