Transfer flops

There is nothing quite as humiliating for manager as signing a player for big money, only to discover him to be a huge failure. This is certainly true for real-life managers, but it is especially embarrassing for virtual managers, who possess a considerable advantage of having objective representation of a player’s ability in the form of stats. So when one sees that a given player possesses a passing rating of 16, and has high ratings in all the other stats that are necessary for good midfielder, and when this initial impression is supported by the fact that this player has been performing well for his club for the past few seasons, it can be frustrating to see this player - whose services you decided to procure for substantial amount of money -fail to perform to adequate standards.

What have been your biggest transfer flops?

My most recent transfer debacle is the ill-fated purchase of Clement Chantome with A.C. Milan in 2016. I had arrived to San Siro in December 2015 as a replacement for the ignominiously dismissed Marco Van Basten, after he mismanaged the team to the seventh spot in Serie A the previous season, and whose lack of results in the current season had clearly cost him the job. I began rebuilding the team, and implementing the narrow diamond formation, which had worked well for me previously. For this purpose, I signed the likes of Sandro (who had played under my stewardship at Shakhtar Donetsk), Carlos Eduardo and Paulo Henrique. I was still in need of one midfielder – Pirlo was too old, and Flamini was by that time a backup player. After scouting around, I came across Chantome. He seemed to be a good midfielder; effective distributor of the ball, competitive tackler; in other words, a balanced midfielder - in many ways similar to Sandro. He also appeared to be a consistent performer, with an average rating of at least 7.26 for the past five seasons, and 7.51 in the last two seasons. So when it came to the negotiations, I had no hesitation in paying PSG €30 million for him. In his first season he made 30 appearances, scoring four goals and making three assists, with an average rating of 6.99; it was a decent, if unspectacular start to his A.C. Milan career. I was hoping that he would improve as he adapted to his new club, a circumstance which was inevitable, considering that he had never played for any other club, except his native PSG. Next season, Chantome mustered 19 appearances, with a mediocre rating of 6.85 before his season - and by extension his A.C Milan career - was tragically and abruptly ended by a hideous eight months long cruciate ligament injury. After he had managed to recover, he was a shadow of his previous self (not that his previous self performed any better.), which is why he now plays for Udinese, whom they purchased for €8 million.

What a flop!

Now that's a nicely written post!

Bringing Ronaldo back to Man U for 100 million, he broke his leg in a friendly against Bury, on his first game back 1 and half seasons later against York in the FA Cup he broke his leg again and then retired after he returned from his last leg break.

My worst flop was near the start of my career with Fulham. I bought Caldwell, a CB from Celtic (I forget his first name). He was £9 million and I thought he would work well at the back with Hangeland. As I do with all of my signings, I try to get them for as long as possible, I gave Caldwell a 5 year deal on a lot of money.

Caldwell seemed to give away penalties every 3 games or so putting me in a very difficult position. After his first season I tried to sell him for absolutely nothing to anyone as I wanted rid of him, I couldn't get rid of him, no-one wanted him and as his contract was long I had to wait it out.

Edit: I just thought I would say I used editor to get the transfer money, without editor Fulham have less than £1 million.

Sound a bit too much like real life and his first name is Gary

Still, an average rating of 7.40+ is pretty good

For me it was Kacar, played him at CB and he was woeful. Luckily I was Man City, so the 15 million wasted didn't matter too much

Still, an average rating of 7.40+ is pretty good

I messed the links up, it should make a bit more sense now. It was a suberb signing for the Ross County manager!

That is utterly woeful. I feel sick for you. I am guessing that was a mere drop in the pond at the time though.

This was my biggest flop, I was convinced he was a boy wonder and paid £20m for him :o

Ouch, 20 million. Unlucky there, but i guess you have to sign a few frogs before you find your prince.

What made you sign him, did he look really good when he was younger?

Ah well, he looks like he will be a decent player for the Scottish 1st division.

Ouch, 20 million. Unlucky there, but i guess you have to sign a few frogs before you find your prince.

What made you sign him, did he look really good when he was younger?

Ah well, he looks like he will be a decent player for the Scottish 1st division.

My scouts raved about him, they were convinced he would be great. Perhaps if he'd gone straight into the first team he might have been but he just couldn't break in. Later on in his career I couldn't even give him away for free, I was just waiting years for his contract to expire.

bought Sergio Agüero for £53m with chelsea in 2010-11...........he only scores against weaker teams........hat-tricks against 5 teams...........and thats it......played 31 PL games only scored in 5 of them.... played in 8 CL games, 2 goals..............and so far in 2011-12 he has played 17 games and scored 6 goals......one of them was a hat trick in a 7-0 win against Ipswich...

I bought a guy called Nicholas N'Kolou (or something) from France for his versatility. He cost me 21m squids. After 2 matches and a rating of 4.90 combined I sent him on loan to Real Madrid for 2m for the season. It's not February and looking at him, he's made 3 appearances and is sitting on a 5.6-ish rating. The worst thing is I have him for another 4 years.

Maybe not the biggest flop in financial terms but the implications of his poor performances made up for that: Roman Kozlov (ST). He was bought for £9.25M (not that big money but considering it was our 1st season in the premier league this was about half of our budget). I had pinned all my hopes of survival on this guy and he completely bombed. It was just embarrasingly bad he scored twice in 24 league games and we ended up getting relegated in 18th place. Luckily I managed to get rid of him for £8M after that season so I didn't make too much of a loss on him. The annoying thing is that he has been reasonably succesful in his early Man City years.

I had Henrique some braziliian CB. Payed over 10m for him and sold him following season.... In season summary he were worst signing, there has been the odd one or two which I have got on a free and they were crap (i.e. Mark Vidka), but I were playin as Sheffield Wednesday so got no money lol!!

I bought a young 16 year old Spaniard in 2012-2013 for €11M hoping that he would become a new club legend but somehow he never really got going. Even when we won easily he could get 6.0 match rating for no particular reason. So after 17 years of mediocracy I sold him to Leeds (even profited ) Probably not a complete flop, but I was expecting much more from him.

Ryan Babel Attributes drop

Ryan Babel for my Valencia team, 014-015 season signed from my beloved Wigan Athletic (any micky takers will be replied to with a blehhhhhhh )

Signed him for 7 million, okay might not be the biggest amount but he's been here two seasons on a rotational contract to cover for any attacking midfielder or just play as my lone strike but the guy instantly complained of a lack of squad harmony and he seems to be the only one complaining so i give him a few games in the cup ties and a couple of the CL games once we'd qualified and the chance to show what he's like against minnow teams in La Liga and he produced nothing, not a goal as a target man dispite his size and not a single assist in the central attacking midfielder position.... was expecting him to chip in with his fair share of goals and assists when my main target man Ignacio & main attacking midfielder David Silva was out but nopeeeeeeeee not a sniff, easily my worst signing so far & just look at the attribute drop aswell also the lad simply cannot get past 7 in the match ratings and he's played 23 games in two years making an average rating of bang on 6.50

Ryan Babel Attributes drop

Ryan Babel for my Valencia team, 014-015 season signed from my beloved Wigan Athletic (any micky takers will be replied to with a blehhhhhhh )

Signed him for 7 million, okay might not be the biggest amount but he's been here two seasons on a rotational contract to cover for any attacking midfielder or just play as my lone strike but the guy instantly complained of a lack of squad harmony and he seems to be the only one complaining so i give him a few games in the cup ties and a couple of the CL games once we'd qualified and the chance to show what he's like against minnow teams in La Liga and he produced nothing, not a goal as a target man dispite his size and not a single assist in the central attacking midfielder position.... was expecting him to chip in with his fair share of goals and assists when my main target man Ignacio & main attacking midfielder David Silva was out but nopeeeeeeeee not a sniff, easily my worst signing so far & just look at the attribute drop aswell also the lad simply cannot get past 7 in the match ratings and he's played 23 games in two years making an average rating of bang on 6.50

I found that having Dirk Kuyt with him helped Babel immensely as once there was another dutchie on the team, he improved and stopped whining. Once he was settled, I booted Kuyt after 2 seasons on a free transfer.

My biggest flop was when I brought Guiseppe Rossi back to Man U. He never scored a single goal in ANY competition all season. I paid 16m for him but sold him back to Spain the next season but had to take a 5m loss.

Fabregas to Rangers in 2021. I was his national team manager too and thought he would bolster the midfield. I spent £10mil and £130,000pw for him only too realise I didn't need him even though he was still quality. Loaned him out and now trying to sell him to Man City for £2mil. Currently as I write this I'm playing as Spain in the 2022 World Cup with Fabby as captain. Lost the first game to Australia and drew the second with Ivory Coast... I'm sure he's turned the team against me, having been unbeaten in the qualifiers.

I came very close to buying a huge flop player but managed to avoid it at least party

In October 2015 i took over at ManU who had won a disappointing 10 points from their first 10 league matches only. Until winter I managed to recover with an unbeaten run thanks to quite a few lucky last minute goals. What I was lacking however was a great and pacey striker to fill in the attacking forward attack role. As my main target, a Brazilian regen striker at Wolfsburg, whose goals under my helm there had pretty much earned me the ManU job singlehandedly, was unattainable, I looked around for someone else.

What I found was a 21 year old regen striker at Milan, a Belgian called Ruud Schütz. He was worth around € 7m, hardly got any playing time and had amazing stats with just one or two rather weak areas. I tried to buy him then but Milan even rejected a € 22m offer and it turned out that I would have to pay close to € 30m which I simply couldn't afford apart from not being sure whether this would be a good investment. Just a few days before the end of the transfer window I finally thought of trying to loan the lad. I managed to get him for a hefty loan fee of € 2.2m (for 4 months...) and a buying option of € 27m. He came, saw and lost. By the end of the season he had 17 appearances in all competitions and scored a meagre 2 goals with an average rating of 6.73. God, how happy I was to not have bought him

Ironically, a year later I still bought him. In the meantime I had repeated the crappy start to the season which cost my predecessor his job and I decided that it should cost me mine as well and resigned. I got lucky to be snapped up by Arsenal just 3 weeks later who had the very same hole in their attack. Differently from the year before, this time Milan were ready to settle for a € 5m deal for a definite transfer. Just like at ManU however, Ruud Schütz failed to deliver at Arsenal as well and got a single goal from 12 appearances. This time however the sporting flop was turned into an economic benefit as in the following summer I managed to sell him on to Fenerbahce for € 9m. Still a flop, but at least no money burned this time

Still, whenever I think about it, I know how close I came to sign the first big-multi-millions flop for many years...