Top 10 worst Premier League signings!

Who are your top ten?

(This is not mine top 10 btw!)

10. Blessing Kaku
Signed from FC Ashdod in Israel, Nigeria international Kaku made just one substitute appearance for Bolton over a year long period, before being released to join Derby His transfer was also examined by the Stevens Enquiry because the agent for the player was Craig Allardyce, the son of Bolton manager Sam.

9. Khalilou Fadiga
Never really going to work out, after the player was released by Inter Milan without making a single appearance due to heart problems. Crazily, he still passed a medical at the Reebok, but collapsed before a match before he had even made his debut. Fitted with a defibrillator, Fadiga insisted to doctors that he wished to carry on playing, but made just 13 appearances in three years before joining Coventry City.

8. Jared Borgetti
Joining Bolton at the age of 32, Borgetti became the first Mexican to appear in the Premier League. He stayed for one season, but looked cripplingly off the pace in the Premier League, scoring just two goals. He was released by the club after his first season, moving to ply his trade in Saudi Arabia.

7. Marcel Alonso
When Bolton sign a 19-year-old from Real Madrid for £2million, it should be news for excitement. However, in two years in the North West the Spaniard has made just seven league appearances in two seasons, and in March 2011 was arrested after being the driver in a car that collided with a wall, killing one of the passengers.

6. Tyrone Mears
Just not a great footballer, if we are being honest, so there was no excuse for Bolton to give their rivals Burnley £1.5million for his services. Broke his leg almost immediately, recovered and made one league appearance, but then complained of pain again. Was supposed to be out of action until March, but has still played just that one game in the Premier League.

5. David Ngog
Quite why Bolton felt it appropriate to spend £4million on a striker that had looked hugely short of confidence in scoring an average of four goals a season in a Liverpool shirt is beyond me, but that they did. He scored three goals last season at a rate of a goal every eleven games, and has strangely been given the number nine shirt for the forthcoming Championship season.

4. Marvin Sordell
However, at least Ngog played. Sordell was part of the England U21 side and one of the most promising strikers in the Football League. Bolton stole a march on many other clubs in landing the striker for £4million, but then made just three substitute appearances in Bolton’s relegation season. Quite why Sordell hasn’t played is fairly unexplainable, but the striker will play in the Olympics before the Championship.

3. Johan Elmander
At the start of his final season Elmander did actually score a few goals, but for a striker that joined for £10million at then left on a free, his record in England was simply not impressive enough. During his three season spell Elmander managed to go ten months without scoring and he ended with 22 goals in 108 games. When you consider that six of his 18 league goals game in 13 games, his poor prolificacy is evident.

2. Dan Shittu
Bolton beat off competition from Rangers to sign the defender for £2million plus add-ons, and must have wished that they had not bothered. In his first season he made nine Premier League starts, and then in his second made five appearances on the bench (unused on every occasion). He was released two seasons into his contract, after playing only reserve football for a year, and joined Millwall on a free transfer.

1. Mario Jardel
The Brazilian was woefully past his best after spells in Portugal and Turkey in which he had been one of Europe’s top goalscorers. Joining at 30 years of age and with a portly stomach, and it’s fair to say that he didn’t win the European Golden Boot at Bolton. He joined for £1.5million and failed to score a single league goal for the club, before he joined Ancona on loan after just seven games. In Italy he was nicknamed Lardo. Nice.

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Christ i forgot we paid 2 million for Shittu.

and yet people say we never spend money... still.

apart from that... the list is a load of crap.

Mark Connolly must rate as being one of our worst buys, at a 1,000,000. without even getting a first team game, far as i can remember... let him go for nowt... he's now at Crawley.

Banks of the Croal wrote:Mark Connolly must rate as being one of our worst buys, at a 1,000,000. without even getting a first team game, far as i can remember... let him go for nowt... he's now at Crawley.

how can mears be on the list, as we haven't seen him

Putting Borgetti on the list is a joke, the guy scored goals when he was given a chance.

It's too soon for Sordell to be on the list, I suspect Ngog will be top this time next season.

I don't see how considering he's already done more than some of our worst signings.

If he manages to kill someone or something then possibly.

What's the point in somebody that doesn't support a club talking about who their worst signings are?

I started doing one but gave up halfway in after realising there's two different ways of interpreting "bad signing". Sometimes the signing itself was good business at the time but it just didn't work out through no fault of the player himself.

Such as Tuncay, of course.

Well Tuncay was absolute crap, I'd have him at number 1

When judging a signing you have to factor in what it cost us. Therefore Elmander was the worst signing, followed (so far) by Ngog. The useless stump.

Can't agree about Alonso .... give the lad a chance.....he has showed some good touches on the ball. Needs game time, fitness & confidence.
OC said recently he couldn't get Sordell in because SKD & Eggnog were playing great ......he must see something diferent in that below ground bunker. If Sordell has a great season people will be screaming about this issue again.....well there is nowt we can do about it now.
Although Elmo was a donkey it does seem we were worse off without him. Poor signing overall though.

Sordell shouldn't be anyhwere near that list....yet. It's not his fault Coyle hasn't given the lad a chance.

I'd swap Sordell for Rasiak, who could easily make number one alongside Ariza Makakula or Daniel Braaten.

This bloke should be on the list somewhere -

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Quinton Fortune....Old fucking cripple.

terenceanne wrote:
OC said recently he couldn't get Sordell in because SKD & Eggnog were playing great.

This is a sackable offence in itself.

Does Stuart Holden qualify? A quality player, but has spent the majority of his Bolton career injured. Can't be seen as a good signing can it.

Shit list, Elmander is clearly the worst signing we've ever made, one of two times we decide to spend big and it goes on that donkey.

I've always felt one of the worst sales we ever made was Blerim Dzemaili without giving him a real chance, moved to Napoli for 9 million euros last summer I bet he's better than Pratley.

Natasha Whittam wrote:Does Stuart Holden qualify? A quality player, but has spent the majority of his Bolton career injured. Can't be seen as a good signing can it.

I'll always regard him as a good signing because he cost nothing and I hold him responsible for that great run of form in the first half of the 2010/11 season, I don't think its a coincidence that we've been shit ever since Jonny Evans destroyed him.

That first half of 2010/11 was some of the best I'd seen us play in the premier league and I'm grateful for that!

If we'd finished on 8 less points in 10/11, we'd have been relegated. Holden bossed every match before his injury and so it's very arguable that had we not signed him, we'd have gone down a year earlier, the cost of which being far greater than Holden's wages, the peak of which I'm told is in the £30k region.

I won't pretend to think Holden's injury was the single reason we finished that season dreadfully because it wasn't. KDavies started very well, but was dreadful from December onwards, Elmander started very sharply, but got poorer by the game once he knew he'd be leaving in July and injuries to Mark Davies and Muamba meant we had to fill the midfield with actual strikers, left wingers and of course Tamir Cohen.

Natasha Whittam wrote:Does Stuart Holden qualify? A quality player, but has spent the majority of his Bolton career injured. Can't be seen as a good signing can it.

Give it a rest, he's contributed more than most do without being injured, this is a guy that runs himself into the ground for the shirt.

a couple of extremely, extremely unlucky injuries through no fault of his own doesn't make him one of our "worst signings ever".

A word for Ibrahim Ba, he was absolutely on another level of bad, didn't he get hauled off before half time for being so utterly shit, i might have made that up because i wanted it to happen.