15 Worst January Transfer Window Signings in Premier League History

January transfers are always a gamble. Clubs scramble to plug gaps, rescue faltering seasons, and chase short-term fixes. Some deals work out, often by sheer luck or timing, but others become cautionary tales whispered around club corridors and barbershop debates alike.

The Premier League, with its money, pressure, and unforgiving pace, has produced some of the most spectacularly misjudged moves, often in the middle of winter when desperation clouds judgment.

This is not a list built on hindsight cruelty. It is built on evidence. Minutes wasted. Money incinerated. Seasons damaged. Careers derailed.

Some of these players were good elsewhere. Some were never good enough to begin with. January did not create their failures, but it exposed them brutally.

15. Jürgen Locadia – PSV Eindhoven to Brighton (£14.1m, 2018)

Brighton broke their transfer record in January 2018 to sign Jürgen Locadia, and you have to wonder what they saw in training that made them think this was worth £14 million.

The powerful forward had scored consistently for PSV Eindhoven in the Eredivisie, but scoring in Holland and scoring in the Premier League are two wildly different things.

Locadia managed six goals in 43 league appearances across three seasons.

Six. For context, that’s roughly one goal every seven months. He looked lost in the Premier League, like someone had dropped him in the deep end without teaching him to swim first. The Dutchman became increasingly bitter about his lack of game time, telling reporters : “I never had a really clear explanation as to why I do not play. The manager will find the other strikers better. I must, of course, respect that. But it is also my career, I cannot keep saying ‘yes and amen‘.”

Maybe the reason was obvious to everyone except Locadia himself. Brighton eventually loaned him out to Hoffenheim before letting him leave for free. Fourteen million quid down the drain.

14. Chris Samba – Anzhi Makhachkala to QPR (£12.5m, 2013)

QPR’s 2012/13 season was a masterclass in how to waste money, and Chris Samba’s signing was the crown jewel of stupidity. They paid £12.5 million and handed him £100,000 a week to come back from Russia and save them from relegation. Even Anzhi could not believe their luck.

The club’s general director basically laughed in QPR’s face: “At QPR he will earn almost as much as he did at Anzhi. In my view QPR have lost their minds. When they agreed to pay his release fee we wept. He wept.”

When the team you’re buying from thinks you’ve lost your mind, that should tell you something.

Samba looked completely off the pace, QPR got relegated anyway, and he scurried back to Russia after six months. The whole thing was embarrassing for everyone involved, but mostly for QPR’s board, who apparently thought throwing money at problems was a legitimate strategy.

SEE ALSO | 10 Best January Transfer Window Signings in Premier League History

13. Theo Walcott – Arsenal to Everton (£20m, 2018)

Everton paid £20 million for Theo Walcott in January 2018, which at the time seemed like decent business for a proven Premier League player. Then he actually played for them, and everyone realized they had bought a declining winger on massive wages who was never quite good enough for Arsenal’s first team anyway.

Walcott scored twice in his first four games, which got everyone excited for about five minutes.

Then reality set in. Over two and a half seasons, he managed 10 goals in 85 appearances. Ten goals in 85 games. For a player brought in specifically to add goals and creativity, that is absolutely shocking. He spent most of his time at Goodison looking like he wished he was anywhere else before Everton finally managed to ship him back to Southampton.

The most damning thing about the Walcott signing was not that he was terrible, but that he was aggressively mediocre while being paid like a superstar.

12. Jean-Alain Boumsong – Rangers to Newcastle (£8m, 2005)

Newcastle paid £8 million for Jean-Alain Boumsong in January 2005, which would be bizarre enough on its own. But Boumsong had joined Rangers on a free transfer just six months earlier, which made the whole thing absolutely baffling.

The deal stank from day one, and there were legitimate questions about how this transfer even happened.

Boumsong proceeded to have one of the worst seasons any defender has ever had in the Premier League. He was slow, clumsy, and prone to catastrophic errors that left Newcastle fans wondering if he had ever actually played professional football before.

Every week brought a new lowlight, and he quickly became the scapegoat for all of Newcastle’s defensive problems, which was actually fair because most of them were his fault.

He lasted 18 months before Newcastle cut their losses and sold him to Juventus for peanuts. The whole saga remains one of the shadiest and most embarrassing transfers in Newcastle’s history.

11. Kostas Mitroglou – Olympiakos to Fulham (£12m, 2014)

Fulham paid a club-record £12 million for Kostas Mitroglou in a desperate attempt to avoid relegation. He made three appearances, scored zero goals, and spent most of his time eating. No, seriously.

Steve Sidwell, his former teammate, laid it out perfectly: “This fucker, he did not stop eating. He was a big boy. And you know the protein bars, every time you’d see him, he’d be walking around the training ground with a fucking protein bar.”

Mitroglou claimed he was injured, Fulham claimed he was unfit, and everyone agreed that the whole thing was a disaster. Fulham got relegated, and Mitroglou was shipped out on loan the following season before leaving permanently.

He remains the ultimate panic buy, a player signed without any real plan who contributed absolutely nothing when his team needed him most.

SEE ALSO | Chelsea’s Next Manager? Top Contenders to Succeed Enzo Maresca

10. Saido Berahino – West Brom to Stoke City (£12m, 2017)

Saido Berahino was once a genuinely exciting young striker who looked destined for big things. By the time Stoke City paid £12 million for him in January 2017, those days were long gone. What Stoke got was an overweight, unmotivated player whose best days were firmly behind him.

Berahino failed to score in his first 27 league appearances. Twenty-seven games without a goal. That is not bad luck or poor service; that is a striker who forgot how to play football. Over two and a half seasons at Stoke, he managed a total of three league goals before being released in 2019.

The Berahino signing was a perfect example of a club buying a player based on who they used to be rather than who they actually were. Stoke gambled that a change of scenery would revive his career. They lost that bet badly.

9. Afonso Alves – Heerenveen to Middlesbrough (£12.5m, 2008)

Middlesbrough paid £12.5 million for Afonso Alves after he scored 45 goals in 39 games for Heerenveen. On the surface, it seemed brilliant. In reality, it was a textbook case of why scoring goals in the Eredivisie means absolutely nothing in the Premier League.

Alves started well enough, scoring six goals in 11 games, including a brace in that famous 8-1 demolition of Manchester City. Everyone thought Boro had found their savior.

The next season arrived, and Alves scored four league goals in 31 games. Four. Middlesbrough got relegated, and Alves was exposed as a player who could bully weak Dutch defenses but crumbled against proper competition.

He left for Qatar soon after, and Middlesbrough were left counting the cost of believing that goals in Holland would automatically translate to England.

SEE ALSO | Premier League Managers’ Salaries 2026: Who Earns the Most?

8. Wilfried Bony – Swansea to Manchester City (£25m, 2015)

Manchester City paid £25 million for Wilfried Bony in January 2015, thinking they were buying a proven Premier League goal scorer who could provide quality backup to Sergio Agüero. Instead, they got a lumbering striker who looked about three steps too slow for their style of play.

Bony managed six goals in 36 league appearances across two seasons. Six goals for £25 million.

He spent most of his time at City looking completely lost, unable to keep up with the game’s pace or link up with his teammates. By the time Pep Guardiola arrived, Bony was so surplus to requirements that City practically gave him back to Swansea just to get him off the wage bill.

The Bony transfer proved that not every player who succeeds at a smaller club can step up to the elite level. Sometimes a 20-goal striker at Swansea is just a 20-goal striker at Swansea.

7. Cenk Tosun – Besiktas to Everton (£27m, 2018)

Everton spent £27 million on Cenk Tosun and got nine league goals in three and a half seasons. That works out to roughly £3 million per goal, which has to be some kind of record for catastrophically bad value.

Tosun looked promising in Turkey, scoring regularly in the Champions League and convincing Everton that he was the answer to their striker problems.

He was not the answer. He was barely even part of the question. The Turkish forward struggled with the pace and physicality of the Premier League, spent half his time injured, and the other half looking completely out of his depth.

The most impressive thing about Tosun’s spell at Everton was his hair transplant, which somehow looked more convincing than his performances. Eventually, Everton cut their losses and moved him on, adding another name to their ever-growing list of striker flops.

6. Andy Carroll – Newcastle to Liverpool (£35m, 2011)

Liverpool sold Fernando Torres to Chelsea for £50 million and immediately spent £35 million of it on Andy Carroll, which at the time was a British record for a homegrown player. This decision made sense to exactly nobody, but Liverpool convinced themselves that a big target man was the perfect replacement for their fleet-footed Spanish striker.

Carroll scored six league goals in 44 appearances across two seasons. Six goals for £35 million. He was injured constantly, looked completely unsuited to Liverpool’s style of play, and spent most of his time at Anfield making everyone wonder what on earth Kenny Dalglish had been thinking.

The Carroll transfer became the punchline to every joke about Liverpool’s transfer committee for years.

They eventually sold him to West Ham at a massive loss, but at least their other Torres replacement worked out alright. Luis Suárez did okay, right?

SEE ALSO | 20 Best Defensive Midfielders in World Football Right Now

5. Guido Carrillo – Monaco to Southampton (£19.1m, 2018)

Southampton paid a club-record £19.1 million for Guido Carrillo in January 2018, and he repaid them by failing to score in 10 league appearances before disappearing entirely. It was one of the most pointless transfers in Premier League history.

Carrillo looked lost from day one, isolated and ineffective in a struggling Southampton side. Manager Mauricio Pellegrino, who had worked with him before and presumably knew what he was getting, was sacked soon after. The new manager took one look at Carrillo and decided he wanted nothing to do with him.

Carrillo later admitted: “I still have a year left in England, but I prefer not to think about it now.”

That pretty much summed up how everyone felt about the whole mess. Southampton loaned him out twice before releasing him on a free transfer, making this a complete financial disaster from start to finish.

4. Savio Nsereko – Brescia to West Ham (£9m, 2009)

West Ham paid £9 million for Savio Nsereko, a largely unknown German winger from Serie B, and the whole thing was dodgy from the start. How dodgy? Dodgy enough that West Ham vice-chairman Karen Brady launched an investigation three years later.

Nsereko made one league start, looked completely out of his depth, and was sold to Fiorentina after less than a year. West Ham lost millions on the deal, and serious questions were asked about how this transfer was approved in the first place.

Brady announced in 2012: “I’m going to investigate the Nsereko deal that the previous board had overseen, citing the huge financial loss West Ham incurred by selling the player for so cheap just six months into his contract.”

3. Alexis Sánchez – Arsenal to Manchester United (Swap deal, 2018)

When Manchester United signed Alexis Sánchez from Arsenal, it seemed like brilliant business. They were getting one of the Premier League’s best players without paying a transfer fee.

Then someone at United decided to offer him wages that would make a Saudi prince blush, and everything went horribly wrong.

Sánchez scored three goals in 32 league appearances and looked like a player who had forgotten how to play football.

His confidence was shot, his form was non-existent, and his astronomical wages poisoned the entire dressing room. Later, he admitted that alarm bells were ringing from day one: “After the first training session I had, I realized a lot of things. After the session, I got home, and I told my family and my agent ‘Can you not rip up the contract to go back to Arsenal?‘”

The Sánchez signing became a symbol of everything wrong with United during their post-Ferguson decline. They were paying a fading player over £500,000 a week while he actively made them worse.

When Inter Milan finally agreed to take him on loan, United probably offered to pay his taxi fare to Italy just to get him out the door.

SEE ALSO | EFL Championship 2025/26 Wage Bills: Highest and Lowest Spending Clubs

2. Fernando Torres – Liverpool to Chelsea (£50m, 2011)

Chelsea paid £50 million for Fernando Torres, a British transfer record at the time, and watched him turn into one of the worst strikers in Premier League history.

Torres had been brilliant at Liverpool, scoring 81 goals in 142 games. At Chelsea, he managed 20 goals in 110 league appearances and looked like someone had stolen his ability to play football.

The Torres signing broke him as a player. His confidence evaporated, his pace disappeared, and he spent four years at Stamford Bridge looking like a man having an existential crisis every time the ball came near him.

Yes, he scored that goal against Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final, but that does not change the fact that he was otherwise catastrophically bad.

1. Mykhailo Mudryk – Shakhtar Donetsk to Chelsea (£88.5m, 2023)

Chelsea paid £88.5 million for Mykhailo Mudryk after gazumping Arsenal at the last minute, and it has turned into one of the biggest disasters in football history. Not just Premier League history. Football history.

Mudryk arrived with enormous hype and proceeded to do absolutely nothing. He failed to score or assist in his first dozen appearances, looking completely lost in the Premier League. He showed occasional flashes of pace and skill, but mostly he looked like a player who had no idea what he was supposed to be doing.

Then came the failed drug test, and suddenly Mudryk went from expensive flop to cautionary tale. Manager Enzo Maresca tried to stay positive: “We all believe that [he is innocent]. No, I don’t think so [that his Chelsea career is over]. I think he will come back, we don’t know when.”

But the damage was done.

Chelsea had paid nearly £90 million and given him an eight-year contract. Even if Mudryk returns, the signing will forever be remembered as a catastrophic failure. Given the fee, the length of the contract, and everything that followed, Mudryk stands alone as the worst January transfer in Premier League history.

SEE ALSO | 10 Premier League Records That May Never Be Broken After Haaland’s 100-Goal Feat