Your transfer flops....

We've all seen the AI spend wildly and madly and bring in some useless squad players for ridiculous amounts of money. But what about you?

Who has made you part with well earned cash only to fall at the first hurdle?

For me, it has to be Riquelme. I bought him for Newcastle, without seeing that he needed a work permit. (I wasn't paying attention). He spent a year at Gornik Zabrze before retiring at 32. £6,000,000 for one year at a Polish team

We've all seen the AI spend wildly and madly and bring in some useless squad players for ridiculous amounts of money. But what about you?

Who has made you part with well earned cash only to fall at the first hurdle?

For me, it has to be Riquelme. I bought him for Newcastle, without seeing that he needed a work permit. (I wasn't paying attention). He spent a year at Gornik Zabrze before retiring at 32. £6,000,000 for one year at a Polish team

Nakamura for £16 million... 30 games, one assist, one woodwork strike. Sold to Inter for £10m, where he improved massively.

Hmmm. The only one that really springs to mind is Albert Luque in FM07. Signed him on a free transfer - but on a massive salary. The guy was perpetually injured for two entire seasons.

Ive had lots but my main one has to be Paul Gascoigne for Crystal Palace in FM06. It was only a free transfer but he was still rubbish.

gabi agbonlahor for chelsea £26m no goals or assists in 20 appearances playing fc or amr

Fabio Quagliarella for 19.25m at WHU,scored 2 times all season in the LC against a lower team and two years later is worth 2m.

Theofanis Gekas to Shakhtar for 8m. He was the "experienced" striker and guaranteed a start, but only managed 3 goals in 20 games. My two rotated young Ukrainean strikers were both considerably more prolific, so I sold Gekas at a loss that Christmas.

valcenia for man city in fm07.paid about 8 million played for two years 2 goals 2 assist.unfortunately he had a habit of everytime he gace the ball away the ither team would always score off it.happened 6 or 7 times

£50m for Steve Henry to Man City.

He had awesome stats, and was very young, but didn't settle in to my system well and was crap in his first couple of years, despite plenty of game time.

I felt he could still realise his potential, but then I left the club.

He improved a bit under new management, and wasn't a total failure, but certainly never approached anything like value for money.

I have never spent anything like that amount of money on a player since.

Paid 60 million Euro for Navas to bring him to Arsenal. Turned in one mediocre performance after another and on top of that was constantly moody. Sent him back to Spain 1.5 seasons later.

1) Alfonso Alves on a free transfer... couldn't hit a barn door with a banjo for 6 months... packed off for 500k the following January after I got sick of the board complaining to me about my lack of judgment in signing him.

2) Not my own transfer really, but Sir Alex decided his last action before retiring should be to spend £24 million on "wonderkid" Sotiris Ninis. After I took over his job I thought fair enough, maybe he'll play some decent games if one of the worlds top managers thinks he's worth 90% of United's transfer budget. I wish I hadn't given him a chance, as after about 10 games and an average rating of around 6.30 he was instantly dropped into the reserves. And of course for months afterwards the fans were complaining about what a poor signing he was, despite him being signed before I took over. Thank you confidence system for nearly costing me my job.

One season later and I can't give him away, thanks to his sky high wages. Another one destined to play reserve football for the majority of his career.

£20 million for Jovetic.

Signed him from my former club after moving from QPR to Man Utd...

Prolific for rangers, lifting me to a UEFA place after 4 seasons... For Man Utd though... 2 goals in 3 seasons... Broken leg x 2... 12 assists though...

Walter Samuel from Inter to Liverpool, wanted the experienced CB after Carragher kept playing like carp. cost me around $18M, he only played 15 games, and also played liked carp.

sold him to Tottenham for $5M, who sold him to Bristol (just promoted) for $1.5M in the next window, still playing like carp!!

Signed this Chilian player( Created) to Manchester United player for £7 Million and he was 3 years of pure brillience. Scoring 78 goals in 63 games in total! Including 4 goals in champions league finals! Next season after those i go to manage Preston and i buy him for £36 Million and he scores 2 goals in 68 games as an out and out striker over two seasons! Completly ****!

Not technically my signing, but I'm halfway through my second season with Man. United and Manucho is just terrible.

oooo i payed 31 mil for silva from valencia, first season he was on fire and well worth the money 31 games 14 goals 16 assists second season something obviously happened to him, he complained about the area in january while before this he played 15 games no goals no assists and his average game was 6.1 !! so i gave him a new contract and loaned him for the rest of the season, little did i know that my chairman would accept a 10.5mil deal from milan 10.5!!! his value was more!! grrrrr

Manuel Fischer, young German striker from VFB, signed for Bayern at £9m and scored 1 in 24 before moving on to Liverpool the following season for £6.75 and went on to win the Golden Boot.

Uche, £9m from getafe for Bayern, he was good but as soon as I bought him Kuranyi and Podolski found their shooting boots and kept him out of the side for 2 years. Eventually sold him for £3.6m, he was actually quite good but it was a waste of money on my part.

Spent my entire budget on (80k) on a striker called Chris Barker I think. He was bought into to give me enough fire power to stay up after scoring 30 goals in the conference the season before.

End of season report read Games; 30(12) Goals; 1 Assists; 0

Sold him for 2k at the end of the year where he promptly went and scored naff all for the rest of his career.

£80M for Kaka on 2007. He was useless and Anderson was 10x better, he only cost me £15m.

I sold him after two years, didn't get a goal, didn't get an assist and was barely involved in the game. Wasn't anywhere near the player I thought he would be. Sold him for £20M, that's a £60M loss

Silva for £32m - was useless especially given his amazing stats.

Raul Albiol - Paid £14m and in his first game he made "a huge mistake" and lost the game for me, havnt played him since.

As Wigan in around 2011, bought a hot young talent (regen) from Ajax called Phillipe van der Vonk for £6,500,000 on a £45,000 per week contract. He was supposedly one of the best young attacking midfielders midfielders around. He played 24 games, scoring once and only one assist. His average rating was something like 6.70. Apparently, he couldn't settle into the area, so I sold him next season to Udinese for £4,000,000, where as far as I remember, he improved greatly and eventually moved to Inter for around the £15,000,000-£20,000,000 mark.

Later on, with my Aston Villa squad in the early 2020's, I paid £15,500,000 +£65,000 a week for the services of a Mexican regen striker called Marco Vasquez from Betis. He was the Spanish League's top scorer for that season, with 24 goals in 36 matches. He was injured for his first five months, hit a great patch for 14 matches after, scoring 10 goals in those, then didn't score again for nearly 7 months. I sold him on to Norwich for £17,000,000.

I've had other flops, but those are my two biggest money flops.

Daniel Galbraith on FM07 from Man U to Everton. Paid £12M for him as he looked pretty good and I needed fresh players to replace some of my ageing strike force

He spent his first season getting ratings so bad I didn't even want to use him as a substitute, loaned him out the following season so he could get some first team experience and the following season he returned to be every bit as mince as he was before. I don't think he ever scored a competitive goal for me and spent his entire career as a sub or in the reserves as I couldn't give him away.....

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by bridport_james:

We've all seen the AI spend wildly and madly and bring in some useless squad players for ridiculous amounts of money. But what about you?

Who has made you part with well earned cash only to fall at the first hurdle?

For me, it has to be Riquelme. I bought him for Newcastle, without seeing that he needed a work permit. (I wasn't paying attention). He spent a year at Gornik Zabrze before retiring at 32. £6,000,000 for one year at a Polish team

</div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I signed Riquelme with Newcastle in the summer of 2008 and had no problems with a work permit. 5 seasons on, he's 34 and still contributing as a bench player. Been a phenomenol signing, now listed on the clubs 'favoured personnel'.

However, I also signed Pasquale Foggia for 10.25 mill(pounds) in January 2010 and offloaded him to everton in the summer of 2011 for 1 mill!! Contributed very little for 60k a week!!!!

spent about 9m on a top youth player that my scouts said would be amazing, after 4-5 scouting trips.

When he signed the assistants advice was to offload him asap and that he was ****. kept him for a couiple of years and then he ended up at a league 1 club.

Damn scouts

1st season with leeds and got promoted need a strong striker to support Stancu upfront , Bought Eastwood for £2.6million as he scored 17 in 32 for wolves who went down thought sure why not!

So Far Apps (14(2)) Goals 2 ,utter poop stancu was 5 Apps 6 goals and got injured for over a month , beckford played along east wood and played 11(3) and bagged 7 goals.

I signed a bunch of flops on CM 03-04 that completely ruined my then title winning Sheff Wed side. Leo Ponzio, Sebastian Saja, Gabriel Milito all utter rubbish. Had to remodel my team after that, but to be fair we came back stronger, winning the league and champs league double the following season.

As far as FM 08 goes, Rob Hulse on a free is my worst, thought I'd made a real coup getting him but he was absolutely diabolical before I shipped him out to Plymouth less than a year later.