Best buys:
Worst buys:Football365 wrote:
10 - Amr Zaki
Oh he's been toilet since November, is only on loan (yeah, we're breaking our own rules - what's it to you?) and has a rather relaxed attitude to timekeeping, but boy he was good before that. Eight goals in his first 11 league games had everyone - including the scouts of the European big boys - rubbing their eyes and wondering where the hell Steve Bruce had found this one. How we all laughed when Bruce pointed to the FIFA rankings (based on international goals-to-games ratio) that said Zaki was the best striker in the world, then how we stopped laughing when he started banging them in. Anonymous for months now, but deserves a mention for that electric early-season form.
9 - Peter Crouch
Weird season down on the south coast. After starting the campaign with arguably the best strikeforce outside the top four, hopes were high of a European charge, but since the departure of Redknapp, Diarra and Defoe it's been a relegation fight. And how much worse would it have been without Crouch? Perhaps £10million for 12 goals is a little disappointing, but using crude, flawed and inexact logic, Crouch's goals have gained 11 points for Pompey, without which they would now be stone bottom.
8 - Andriy Arshavin
Last summer, as Arshavin's agent Dennis Lachter managed the impressive achievement of standing out as one of the more despicable members of his profession by hawking his man across the continent, all the talk was of a man who went missing when it mattered. 'Would he be able to stand the physical rigours of Blighty?' we mused. Well, based on the evidence since January, it's an emphatic 'Yes'.
It's worth noting that Arsenal haven't lost a game that Arshavin has started, and without his clinical intervention would have been embarrassed at Anfield last month. Would be higher on this list if his contribution had actually led to any tangible success this campaign, but he may prove to be one of the most astute buys Wenger has ever made.
7 - Robinho
Rubbish away from home, apparently shoddy attitude, in the papers for, shall we say, the wrong reasons, but the Premier League would have been a duller place this season without him. For all the stretches of anonymity, there have been some dazzling moments of skill - skill that few others in the division, let alone in the Manchester City side, are capable of.
His was also an important signing for ADUG's hopes of world domination. While it's true that Robinho was simply desperate to leave Real Madrid last summer and would have gone anywhere for the right coin, it proves that City have the muscle to buy players of world renown. Kaka may have turned his nose up, but if they are serious about challenging the top four cartel, then more signings like Mr De Souza are required.
6 - Marouane Fellaini
'Who the f**k is he?' was this correspondent's reaction upon hearing that Everton had splashed £15million on a 20-year-old Belgian who looked like Screech from Saved By The Bell. Wrong we were proved, with Fellaini contributing an impressive nine goals from midfield, and perhaps most importantly taking some of the burden from Tim Cahill. In a season when Everton have been so short of strikers - often having to operate without one - Fellaini's contributions have been invaluable.
5 - Sebastien Bassong
If there is a small, tiny, pinprick of shining light at Newcastle this season, it is this young Frenchman. Signed ostensibly as 'one for the future' last summer, Bassong was quickly pressed into action, initially at left-back, but has since established himself as United's most consistent performer in the middle of defence. While that may sound like a back-handed compliment, it really isn't, and if Newcastle do go down then Bassong will be one of the only men who can leave with some degree of pride.
4 - Luka Modric
Apparently rejected by Arsene Wenger on the basis that he was too lightweight, Modric's early-season form looked to have confirmed those fears. First Juande Ramos, then Harry Redknapp didn't seem to know what to do with him - centre midfielder? Support striker? Free role? Then, 'Huzzah' said 'Arry. 'Why not play him in a nominal left-sided position joining attacks from the flank?' As it turns out, not a bad idea at all, and Modric has been the creative fulcrum of Tottenham's post-October success.
3 - James Beattie
A match made in heaven, this. It took Tony Pulis two stabs at it, but after the failure of Dave Kitson, he cracked the perfectly simple plan of procuring a battering ram up front to convert the chances that Stoke's somewhat robust style of play created. Whether both Beattie and Stoke will be found out next season remains to be seen, but for this campaign this was an absolutely spiffing bit of business, what what.
2 - Mark Schwarzer
Ask a Middlesbrough fan what exactly has gone wrong this season and you could be there for a while, but surely a massive factor in their demise has been their failure to replace one of the best goalkeepers in the Premier League.
While much of Fulham's success this season has been based on the rock solid, intimidating and Easter Island statue-esque presence of Brede Hangeland, their exemplary defensive record can be largely attributed to the air of calm assuredness that Schwarzer exudes. Fulham have conceded the fewest goals of anyone outside the top three (Arsenal's spanking on Sunday pushed their 'GA' column above the Cottagers'), and with Schwarzer an ever-present and keeping clean sheets in over half of those games, it doesn't take a genius to work out where they have gone right.
1 - Wilson Palacios
Given the appalling events of the weekend, this may look like a sympathy vote, but it really isn't. In fact, that Palacios has been living with the knowledge that his brother was in captivity for 18 months makes his performances all the more remarkable.
Palacios has been the sort of player that Spurs have needed ever since Edgar Davids left - someone with some toughness to allow the rest of the midfield to play. And boy has it worked. You could argue that Palacios is perhaps the sole reason for Tottenham's latter-season form, given that his industry allows the likes of Aaron Lennon and Luka Modric ahead of him to create and attack in the safe knowledge that they have some protection behind them.
Spurs have spent ridiculous amounts on duff players over the last few years, but £14million for Palacios could turn out to be a bargain.
Football365 wrote:
10) Nicky Shorey (£2.5m to Aston Villa)
To be fair there are a few candidates for this list in the Villa squad as Steve Sidwell and Carlos Cuellar have hardly set the Premier League alight for their combined £12.8m, but we at F365 have been particularly amused by Shorey's move to Villa to provide cover and competition for the injured Wilfred Bouma. He was so underwhelming in the role that the manager preferred to play two players out of position (including Luke Young on the left) rather than call on the former England international. He's back in the side now, but we don't think Bouma will be too worried.
9) Fabricio Coloccini (£10.3m to Newcastle)
Hands up who thinks that the player who was given an absolute (if we were Alan Pardew we would say something different here) shoeing by Liverpool in a five-goal mauling in December, or was made to look like an amateur by Chelsea earlier this month, was a sensible £10m-plus investment. Nobody? Not even Dennis Wise? The Argentine has been rescued time and time again by the inexpensive Sebastien Bassong all season and undoubtedly he will slope off back to Spain in the summer as Newcastle prepare for a season in the Championship.
8) Borja Valero (£4.7m to West Brom)
A promoted club obviously has limited funds so that money has to be spent wisely and sensibly, usually on experienced campaigners. Unless you're West Brom, of course, who broke their transfer record to spend £4.7m on a relatively unknown 23-year-old Spaniard who had plied his trade exclusively for Real Mallorca. Unsurprisingly, it has not gone brilliantly well and Valero was last seen being urged by Jonathan Greening to stay and learn his trade in the Championship. How well do we think that suggestion will go down?
7) Robbie Keane (£20m to Liverpool)
Keane would be higher up this list had Liverpool not recouped a good whack of that money already, but the Anfield club still paid around a £1m a month to have Keane in their ranks for half a season. We haven't got space here to go into the whys and wherefores of the deal (did Rafa ever want him? Did he ever get a real chance?) but the upshot is that Liverpool paid £20m for a striker who did not deliver, and that makes him a shoo-in for this list.
6) Dave Kitson (£5.5m to Stoke City)
"I hold my hands up - it was my fault. I made the decision to go to Stoke, I didn't have to, no-one forced me to go, and it was a bad decision," sayd Kitson, who ended the season back at Reading on loan with no goals and a new nickname (Dave S***son) the only thing he had to show for his sojourn in Stoke. It had been a disaster for both club and player, though Tony Pulis more than made up for his mistake when he spent less than half the that club-record amount to sign James Beattie - a striker far, far better suited to Stoke's style.
5) Andrea Dossena (£7m to Liverpool)
Apart from bringing him off the bench during a rout to score a cracking goal in a 'look how bad you are, even Dossena can score against you' stylee, it's difficult to see what value Dossena brings to Liverpool for his £7m. Just like the majority of the F365 editorial staff, the Italian looks 'prone to fat' and has struggled with any semblance of pace. Rafa Benitez may be a master tactician, but paying £7m for a third-choice left-back proves that there are still things he needs to learn.
4) Deco (£8m to Chelsea)
Hands up, we were among the media bods saying back in September that Deco might well be the missing piece in the Chelsea jigsaw after he set off at a canter for the Blues. We should have listened to followers of his career in Spain who warned that he would soon lose interest and the old, lazy attitude would return. Fast-forward a few months and the Portugeezer is just a bit-part player - his last 'bit' was his cameo off the bench when Bolton almost came back from a 4-0 deficit - and he's quite likely to be moved on again in the summer. Probably not for £8m, mind.
3) Jimmy Bullard (£5m to Hull)
As a statement of intent and a PR exercise, it's easy to see Hull's logic in doling out big money on one of England's favourite footballers. But spending £5m on a 30-year-old player - with reported £45,000-a-week wages over a massive four-and-a-half year deal to boot - with a history of knee problems looks frankly a bit mental. Ths sum total of his efforts for Hull so far? 38 minutes of football in a battle for survival that the Tigers could very well lose.
2) Jo (£19m to Manchester City)
If we'd done this list back in January, we might have speculated that Jo was unsuited to Premier League football. We might have lumped him in with Afonso Alves as the most recent examples of Brazilian strikers who fail to adapt to English football. But David Moyes would have made us look as foolish as Mark Hughes, who failed to coax more than one goal out of a player who has already scored five for the Toffees. Manchester City's owners may not care a jot about the money - after all he only cost about a tenth of a Kaka - but they probably care that their manager looks a tad daft.
1) David Bentley (£15m to Tottenham)
Oh lordy, where did it all go wrong? The move to Spurs was supposed to cement his place as England's first-choice right-winger, and instead the only team he's guaranteed to play for is Tottenham's reserve side. To be fair, he's clearly found his level because he's been in fine scoring fettle for the stiffs, but that's probably not what Daniel Levy had in mind when he signed a cheque for a massive £15m last summer. Harry Redknapp said back in January that if "we can get him going we can have a terrific player again". As he's since played 19 minutes of Premier League football, we assume that 'Arry's plan has backfired somewhat.