The top 10 biggest transfer flops of the Premier League season - including Chelsea and Man Utd signings

As we get into the meat of the transfer window and begin to get all giddy about the various players our teams end up signing, it’s worth remembering the second edge of the sword – some of these guys will be rubbish.

The 2022/23 season may have set sort of record for sheer volume of underperforming, overpriced or just plain awful players signed by Premier League clubs, with quite a few pricey duds floating around the top tier.

We’ve compiled a list of our top ten of the very worst signings made this past season, prepared by the usual system of digging into the statistics, dropping in a few arbitrary judgements, and in this case by copy and pasting “Chelsea” quite a lot.

10. Keane Lewis-Potter – Brentford

One of the brightest attacking forces in the Championship during his time at Hull City, the young Englishman was scooped up by the usually sharp Brentford for around £10m plus a host of add-ons, none of which look like being met as it stands. Lewis-Potter didn’t score a single goal in his 10 appearances, spending almost all of his time stuck on the bench before injury struck and prematurely ended his season – which, in fairness, made it pretty tricky to prove his early season form was no more than a blip. A bad start to life as a Premier League player, but he’s only 22, so plenty of time to put it all right.

9. Richarlison – Tottenham Hotspur

Perhaps the best player in Brazil’s World Cup run but apparently not to the tastes of Antonio Conte, the former Everton man cost a cool £50m but barely started a match for Spurs – one of several victims of a transfer policy which was largely based around buying players that Conte didn’t remotely want.

Richarlison had to wait until the very end of April to finally score a Premier League goal for his new club, and spent much of the season sat on the bench next to Yves Bissouma, Djed Spence, Arnaut Danjuma and everyone else that Spurs generously gave their manager against his wishes. Given just how many players were a victim of this peculiar transfer strategy, we feel it would be harsh to put a man who also scored that sensational scissor kick against Serbia too high up the list.

8. Marc Cucurella – Chelsea

What does £60m or so buy you these days? A bright start, a pile of bouffant curls and a rapid disintegration. The former Brighton man, who was a persistent attacking threat when he played on the south coast, picked up two assist in his first four games and exactly zero for the rest of the season as his form plummeted – culminating with an injury that kept him out of the last seven games of the season, which was probably a relief to most of the Chelsea fans. Not that there was all that much relief for them, of course.

7. Antony - Manchester United

In the top five most expensive Premier League transfers of all time, and one of the most disappointing as well. Antony arrived at Old Trafford with a bag of tricks, a stepover for every occasion, and a relatively slim return of eight goals in 44 appearances.

The Brazilian show pony spends an awful lot of time trying to find inventive ways to beat his man, but isn’t very good at it – getting past the defender less than 40% of the time. Which isn’t that bad, but is pretty iffy for an £80m man who’s made beating the defender his entire personality.

6. Jonjo Shelvey – Nottingham Forest

Nottingham Forest had already signed so many players that they were incapable of registering them all at the point they signed Shelvey – so not only were his utterly underwhelming performances pretty poor in their own right, they also forced younger players like Lewis O’Brien out on loan.

Costing Forest around £5m, he played eight matches, impressed absolutely nobody, and was promptly dropped from the matchday squad completely. Once Steve Cooper’s side have finished signing another 20 or so players this summer, Shelvey seems unlikely to still be on the squad list come September.

5. Kalvin Phillips – Manchester City

When the England midfielder made his move to the Etihad over the summer, he probably assumed that he would start more than two matches – but the former Leeds United man struggled to get in the side with the imperious Rodri playing the midfield anchor role to perfection pretty much all year.

Pep Guardiola does have a track record of taking seemingly ill-suited players and making them into successful part of the City machine, of course, so it might be a bit early to write this transfer off just yet, but then again it’s been a while since they had a good Jack Rodwell sort of signing, and perhaps they were just due one.

4. Paul Onuachu – Southampton

I think it’s reasonable to say that quite a lot of Premier League fans’ response to Onuachu’s inclusion in this list will be “who?” – well, he was the striker signed to save Southampton’s season. His continued obscurity tells you how well that went. He cost about £15m from Belgian outfit KRG Genk in January, scored no goals at all, didn’t provide any assists, and failed to complete a full ninety minutes. Was brought into to try and save a sinking ship and basically sat on the deck twiddling his thumbs.

3. Philippe Coutinho – Aston Villa

Intended as something of a statement signing, Coutinho arrived for the best part of £20m from Barcelona following a successful few months on loan – and promptly fell off a cliff.

The Brazilian – or at least the shadow of his former self, which was all that anybody saw this season – didn’t score a single goal or register an assist all the way up until the middle of February, when he finally found the back of the net in a 4-2 defeat to Arsenal. That proved to be his last league game, and he disappeared completely from the matchday squad for the rest of the campaign. An unmitigated disaster of a season for a man who was once one of the finest in the division.

2. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang – Chelsea

Speaking of formerly fabulous players who came back to England from Barcelona and promptly managed a sum total of one goal in a horribly unedifying season… the Gabonese forward was barely recognisable as he moped around the turf of Stamford Bridge, all of the snap and fizz of his Arsenal days completely absent.

He cost about £10m in September, scored against Crystal Palace on debut, and by January he was out of the squad completely, and wasn’t even registered to play in Europe. He also didn’t complete 90 minutes once for his new club, although in fairness he did also pick up a couple of goals against AC Milan in the Champions League – a little spot of polish applied to the turd that was his Chelsea career.

1. Mykhaylo Mudryk – Chelsea

If you’re going to splash a ton of money on a player, sign them to an eight-year contract and performatively gazump a local rival into the bargain, then that player had better be good. The unfortunate Mudryk was not.

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Mudryk has spent six months at Stamford Bridge and in that time has posted more controversial Instagram stories than he’s scored goals – admittedly, a bar cleared by any positive integer, because he hasn’t scored any. Zero goals, few chances created and defensive contributions that could only be found with a microscope under laboratory conditions – in other words, it’s been a rough ride. Still – they’ve got another seven years to sort it all out, eh?