Whenever footballers, managers or supporters suggest their club
needs new players, it is tempting to point out that recruitment can
make things worse, not better. As ESPNsoccernet's worst 10
signings of the season show...
10. Tal Ben-Haim
Since excelling at Bolton, Tal Ben-Haim has managed the sort of
sequence of underachievement that might be some kind of record. He
has passed through five Premier League clubs without impressing at
any. West Ham clearly ignored his immediate past when they borrowed
the defender from Portsmouth in August. What they got was a plummet
to the foot of the Premier League, not helped by Ben-Haim's form:
his first five league games produced just two points, while his
last was a 5-0 hammering at Newcastle.
9. Sebastien Squillaci
When Arsene Wenger discarded his usual strategy by paying a
sizeable sum (around £6 million) for a 30-year-old, the question
was if the Arsenal manager had ignored his youth policy for a good
reason. Eight months later, the answer appears not: Squillaci,
unlike most Arsenal recruits, has a lower resale value. But, more
pertinently, he has not performed on the pitch. The centre-back
appears especially incompatible with his fellow Frenchman Laurent
Koscielny - the Gunners' first five Premier League defeats occurred
when they were paired - and when Thomas Vermaelen is eventually
fit, will probably rank as the fourth-choice central defender.
8. Alexander Hleb
"Here you just need to fight, run, not too much passing," Alexander
Hleb said. "This, for me, is something new." As Birmingham have
rarely been confused with Barcelona, what did he expect? And as
Hleb appears the antithesis of no-frills workaholics like Craig
Gardner and Lee Bowyer, what did the club imagine he would do? From
the start, Birmingham and Hleb were a marriage of convenience that
was doomed to end in divorce: he needed a club, they a flair player
after Charles N'Zogbia's wage demands ended a bid to bring him
south from Wigan. It is unsurprising that he rarely starts for Alex
McLeish's side and, in its own way, just as predictable that
Birmingham's battling qualities, rather than Hleb's skill, will
keep them up.
7. James Milner
A staple diet of unofficial awards is the choice of the most
improved player. Last year, it may well have been James Milner.
This season, however, Milner appears the prime contender for
whatever the opposite is: the player who has regressed most,
perhaps. Factor in a £26 million fee in an almost uniquely
unsuccessful swap (Stephen Ireland, who went to Aston Villa in the
same deal, was another contender for this list) and a player who
was supposed to have cemented his arrival at the division's top
table instead seems to have made one of the misguided moves of the
year. No longer in the Manchester City team, he has only played
well on a handful of occasions, and one of those was his
valedictory appearance for Villa.
6. Roque Santa Cruz
Blackburn's January quest for a galactico earned ridicule aplenty,
and rightly so. When David Beckham, Ronaldinho and Juan Roman
Riquelme took the utterly unexpected decisions that an offer from
Ewood Park was one they definitely could refuse, the returning
Roque Santa Cruz became the biggest name to arrive in East
Lancashire. But fame isn't everything and Rovers' bizarre attempts
at recruitment are backfiring. Santa Cruz is yet to score since
returning to the club who somehow pocketed £18 million when selling
him to Manchester City; apart from one header that hit the bar, he
has rarely looked like finding the net. Predictably, he has seldom
appeared fit and his struggles are one cause of Blackburn's descent
down the table.
5. Mauro Boselli
Wigan's low profile can be a benefit. At most of their rivals,
rather more questions would be asked about the failure of the club
record signing to muster a solitary league goal. Instead, Mauro
Boselli disappeared on loan to Genoa without too many noticing. Yet
should Wigan's six-year spell in the Premier League come to an end,
the £6 million man's drought - incorporating a crucial missed
penalty in a potentially decisive defeat at West Ham - will be the
major cause, especially in a squad that lacks scoring strikers.
4. Christian Poulsen
In a department of the Liverpool team where the recent alumni
include Xabi Alonso, Javier Mascherano and Dietmar Hamann while
Steven Gerrard and Raul Meireles are among the current competition,
the standards are high. To say Christian Poulsen fell short is an
understatement. Anfield has seen few less positive passers than the
Dane and, while his long association with Roy Hodgson was one
explanation of his unpopularity, Poulsen's performances were
another. His first season on Merseyside seems certain to end with
youngster Jay Spearing ahead of him in the queue for the central
midfield places.
3. Paul Konchesky
Liverpool's summer business was so poor that they could fill much
of this list. In the end, unimpressive as they have been, there was
no room for Joe Cole or Milan Jovanovic. So there was stiff
competition for the title of the worst signing at Anfield, but Paul
Konchesky is a deserving winner. Quite how, having worked with
Konchesky for two-and-a-half seasons at Fulham, Roy Hodgson deemed
him a Liverpool player is a mystery, but the left-back's mistakes
were a constant: defeats at Stoke and Tottenham can be attributed
to his errors. Tellingly, Liverpool have looked far more secure
with anyone else on the left of the defence.
2. Bebe
The strangest signing of the season, Bebe continues to astonish.
Not in the right ways, however: utterly dismal displays in the
Carling Cup defeat at West Ham and the FA Cup win over Crawley
provoke a sense of surprise that anyone could deem him a Manchester
United player. Sir Alex Ferguson, famously, had not seen the
Portuguese winger before buying him but he paid more for Bebe than
he did for Javier Hernandez. Barring a remarkable improvement in
the remainder of his United career, the callow forward may go down
as one of Ferguson's worst signings.
1. Fernando Torres
The long wait was ended 14 games and 732 minutes into his Chelsea
career when the most expensive player in the history of English
football finally scored. Yet the verdict on the £50 million man
this season may be that his signing cost Chelsea their chance of
winning the Premier League and the Champions League; it might
inadvertently result in Carlo Ancelotti's departure. Because, while
Chelsea have generally fared better with Torres on the bench, his
move appears to have revitalised Liverpool and caused his new club
no end of problems.