There’s player moves on here that didn’t ruin their careers, they were just not the right move at the right time, but ones they moved on from. Surely this should be about players who looked like they were going to have amazing careers, got a big move then died on their arse, and slid down the pyramid afterwards?
Some of the stories say that Keane ruined him. He has to as a united fan been one of the biggest let downs of a major signing. Along with di Maria. We never seem to do too well with South American’s . Look at forlan, not a big signing but was by an large average other than making a mockery of Liverpool. He left and was unbelievable in the Spanish league.
di maria was a big surprise, started out great then fell off a cliff but i think it was the whole way van gaal played. He's picked back up at PSG (but to be honest who wouldn't). Draxlers career has fallen off a cliff going to psg rather than any club he wanted.
Some of the players listed still had some real highlights at the clubs they moved to and won trophies, not sure they should fall into the category of poor career move. Torres for example seemed to have lost a yard of pace prior to going to Chelsea, I think his effectiveness would have dropped at Liverpool even if he hadn’t moved to Chelsea. And by moving he won more trophies and scored in a European cup final, put Barca out of the CL Semi final, and scored against Bayern in the uefa supercup. So despite his overall scoring form dropping off a cliff he still had some good moments and won trophies before getting the move he would have wanted anyway back to Atletico Madrid. And Ibrahimovic to Barca, he still scored 16 goals in 29 games. He had 11 goals and 4 assists in his first 15 appearances for them before injuries and falling out of favour. Set the record for consecutive games with goals scored from first game at Barca getting to 7 in 7. He got into the uefa team of the year while at Barca as well as winning 4 trophies. And went on to have a trophy and goal filled career after leaving Barca.
Mhikitaryan to Arsenal and Sanchez to Utd i’d put into the failed career move category. Though Sanchez did make **** loads of money out of it!
I considered that one though there's a few who fall into a similar bracket (drinkwater or sidwell to Chelsea). There's a few who get hoovered up and disposed of, especially English ones who fit the quota.
Joe Cole moving to Liverpool at the peak of his career, and then promptly dying on his posterior after Gerrard infamously labelled him as being as good as Messi.
Bentley to us. "The new David Beckham" was expected to be a star for club and country, few years in with us and he ended up on loan at Rostov FC in Russia and then retired from football at 29 after being without a club for a year. Did score that goal mind.
The hilarity with him is that you get to watch the exact moment his career was over whilst he jumped up and down grinning in his wet pants.
He went on to do alright in fairness, probably didn't hit his peak until a few years after that. I always thought he was pretty poor for us though having expected him to be pretty good but ( similar to Carrick) seemed to get better with age.