Whether it be in terms of whether they didn’t play as well as you expected them to be, or if they were injured/unfit all the time during their career at your club or perhaps got on bad terms quickly into their career at your club (e.g. Di Maria at Man Utd).
As a Liverpool fan, I can think of names like Aquilani, Robbie Keane, Morientes, Andy Carroll, Kewell, Litmanen, Nuri Sahin etc.
But the one that has to take the cake is Naby Keita. I was very excited when it was announced he would be joining us. He was like the 2nd best midfielder in the Bundesliga that season for Leipzig in the data and for a couple of seasons had shown a lot of great technical ability. He joins us and the rest is history. It’s not to say he didn’t have good moments with us when he had a run of games in the first team. But that was presicely the issue, getting a run of games. It was a constant cycle of spending over half his time injured and when returning, not always having his best games due to slowly returning to fitness and when he did start showing his sparkle he’d go off injured again for a while. I am not just gutted for us but gutted for him too in how it could’ve and should’ve turned out.
Sancho, Di Maria, Falcao, Pogba, Maguire, onana, Ronaldo, Depay….
How are you already writing Onana off because of a few mistakes at the start of the season? He already seems to have recovered…
Ok I’ll take onana back. He has recovered well to be fair to the lad.
Keita it has to be
Either of the De Jong brothers.
James Rodriguez
That was a man who used an absolute stunning tournament performance to catapult his career. It just turns out he was no where near that good normally.
Naby Keita
Turbo Timo
Davor Suker when he signed for Arsenal.
He was 2nd best player at the World cup barely 1 year before joining Arsenal. I was more excited about signing Suker than Henry, at the time.
Funny how things turn out
Such a shame how it turned out. The memory that sticks in my head is the penalty miss against Galatasaray in the 2000 uefa cup final
Davy Klaassen, Wayne Rooney (the second time), Theo Walcott, Morgan Schneiderlin, Neal Maupay, Dele Alli (although I’m delusional about him so I’m convinced he’ll come good for us some day), Samuel Eto’o.
I was excited about Klaasen. Rooney performed as expected.
Bought the Scheiderlin shirt after the first season as I thought we had a winner there.
Here’s hoping Dele comes out with fire and is a world beater.
As a long suffering wolves fan this post could solely be devoted to players we’ve had over the years. But just sticking to these last few years back in the top flight - whilst Guedes came with high expectations he was just a sook and never looked up for it, but I honestly was more disappointed with Nunes. He came in as a record signing with promises of transforming our midfield and making it more dynamic. All he did other than that great goal against Chelsea was give the ball away a bunch, get upset and get himself sent off. Then threw his toys out the pram as soon as City showed an interest. He’s a fucking snake, hopefully Pep does just as much for his career as he’s done for Kalvin Phillips.
Pepe. I was so optimistic about a front three of Pepe, Laca and Auba and it just didn’t come together at all. On paper it should’ve been the best attack in the league, such a disappointment.
Albert Luque. Nuts stats on FM. Didnt really translate to on the pitch play. He skied his first ever chance. he wasnt BAD per se. Just nothing like his insane reputation.
I remember Palermo in 2006 where he was the only fit striker so played by default and scored the only goal for Newcastle to beat the team that, at the time, lead Serie A. What a bizarre day that was
Havertz at Arsenal
Wait what?! You mean you mention all thise hopefuls and never mentioned Sean Dundee?!?
Nuno Gomes, Michel Salgado, Danny Murphy, Dixon Etuhu, Peter Whittingham
Ángel Di María