1. Robbie Keane (Tottenham – Liverpool, £20
million)
Keane was billed as the perfect attacking foil for Fernando
Torres when he joined the club he supported as a boy for what many
at the time felt was slightly over the odds, despite Keane’s
obvious talent that made him the top Premier League goalscorer in
the calendar year of 2007.
But it hasn’t gone well. In 22 appearances for Liverpool he has
completed the 90 minutes on just three occasions and scored just
twice in the league. Being substituted for David Ngog at Anfield
against West Ham when Liverpool were chasing the game and
preventing a certain goal for Torres at Sunderland by running in
his way early in the season are emblematic moments in his difficult
start to life at Anfield.
2. Jo (CSKA Moscow – Manchester City, £19
million)
Manchester City’s record signing – albeit for less than two
months – Jo is a lasting legacy of the incompetence of previous
owner Thaksin Shinawatra and a lesson that buying Brazilian is no
guarantee of buying quality. That £19 million has bought just one
league goal – in the 6-0 drubbing of Portsmouth – and two more in
European competition, against Omonia Nicosia. Jo hasn’t started a
league game since the 2-2 draw with Newcastle on October 20 and
with Mark Hughes set to go mad in the January sales, he is unlikely
to any time soon.
3. Heurelho Gomes (PSV Eindhoven – Tottenham,
£7.8 million)
Gomes has become the latest custodian to fall foul of the
goalkeeping graveyard that is White Hart Lane. A regular in the
Champions League with former club PSV Eindhoven, Gomes was seen as
the experienced, reliable answer to the problem of Paul Robinson,
but instead has turned out to be a comedy turn whose fear of
crosses is more pronounced than Dracula's. His errors are too
numerous mention here but the goal he gifted to Fulham stands out
as the worst.
4. Giovani Dos Santos (Barcelona – Tottenham,
£8.6 million)
An undoubtedly gifted, ball playing forward schooled in the
footballing hothouse of Barcelona, there was always a question mark
over the physique of the slight Mexican moving to the Premier
League. As Tottenham laboured under Juande Ramos, Dos Santos cut a
bemused figure, when he played. Harry Redknapp’s revival does not
seem likely to have a place for the youngster.
5. Dave Kitson (Reading – Stoke City, £5.5
million)
Kitson has turned in the occasional intelligent, busy
performance and has suffered due to injury but, those
qualifications aside, when Stoke City broke their transfer record
to sign Kitson they thought they were buying goals – that he hasn’t
registered a single one makes Kitson’s time at the club a
failure.
6. Xisco (Deportivo La Coruna – Newcastle, £5.7
million)
Brought in against then manager Kevin Keegan’s wishes on
transfer deadline day, Jimenez Tejeda Xisco has struggled to adapt
to life in the North East. Even the change of manger hasn’t helped,
with the Spanish Under-21 international not starting a game under
Joe Kinnear. Injuries have played their part but, aside from a goal
against Hull in September, the striker has added little when
Newcastle have needed a lot of help in that department.
7. Nicky Shorey (Reading – Aston Villa, £3
million)
Shorey has not seen much Premier League football since a howler
gifted Middlesbrough a goal and the game in the dying minutes of a
match in early November. It wasn’t the former England
international’s first mistake of a difficult season at Villa Park.
Shorey is the only recognised left-back at the club but his place
has been taken by right-back Luke Young in recent weeks, a measure
of how far he has fallen in manager Martin O’Neil’s
estimations.
8. Johan Elmander (Toulouse – Bolton, £11
million)
Elmander may well have helped himself to a couple of goals
against Sunderland – but that sentence carries its own
qualification rather than an endorsement of his talents. Bolton’s
record signing should have had a hat-trick that day and his
performances in the first part of the season were woeful. Whether
his recent success, as with Bolton’s recent good form, will be
lasting remains to be seen.
9. Pascal Chimbonda, Teemu Tainio and Steed
Malbranque (Tottenham – Sunderland, undisclosed)
When items are bulked together for a discount sale you can be
sure the constituent parts aren’t everything the seller might have
you believe. And so it was with this three-for-one sale at
Tottenham. Malbranque was quality at Fulham but vanished at White
Hart Lane, Tainio full of potential and nothing more and Chimbonda
as much trouble as talent. In Roy Keane’s struggling side none has
had anything like a genuinely positive impact.
10. Marvin Emnes (Sparta Rotterdam –
Middlesbrough, £3.2 million)
Marvin who, you ask? Quite. Middlesbrough have not won any of
the three league matches in which he has featured, always from the
bench, and though manager Gareth Southgate has suggested the
20-year-old is one for the future, can a club the size of
Middlesbrough really afford over £3 million for a reserve team
player these days?