Bringing a player in on loan should be a relatively low-risk affair – but Premier League clubs including Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United have still managed to get it badly wrong.
A loan is essentially football’s equivalent of try-before-you-buy. You might have to stump up a bit of a loan fee and cover wages, but if things don’t work out, nothing lost, right?
Well, not in all cases. Some loans are simply so bad that all involved parties come out looking terrible. Here, we’ve rounded up 14 of the worst examples in Premier League history.
Saul Niguez
This was a classic bit of clever business. Chelsea needed a bit of cover in central midfield, Saul, a classy operator at his best, needed a fresh start after a tough season at Atletico Madrid. Perfect.
Or perfect on paper. A bloody disaster in reality.
He made just five Premier League starts in 2021-22, and in two of those games suffered the ultimate football ignominy, getting hooked at half-time.
With a loan fee of £3.4million and wages of almost £200,000 a week, he didn’t exactly come cheap either.
Some media outlets have asked whether he was the worst loan signing in Premier League history. But trust us, Saul has some seriously stiff competition.
Kim Kallstrom
Some of the stiffest competition comes in the shape of Kallstrom, who Arsene Wenger brought in at Arsenal in January 2014.
At the time, Arsenal were flying high. Only Manchester City were ahead of them in the league and it looked like they could win their first title in a decade.
They needed reinforcements to keep up their challenge and a 100-cap Sweden international with Champions League experience looked a good option.
He wasn’t. Days before signing, Kallstrom had been in Abu Dhabi and fell over while playing football on a concrete pitch.
“I fell badly on a small rock. I hit my back and had some pain,” he said later, as quoted by the Star.
“Obviously we were due to go back to Moscow the day after so we didn’t do any medical check-up there because it wasn’t too bad at the time. We informed Arsenal straight away that I had a problem with my back and that I had no idea what it was, so they just told me to come along anyway.
“It was a bit of a blur because the deal had to be done quickly. I came to London, we had the medical and we found out there were some problems but we arranged the deal anyway.”
He then spent two months on the treatment table and made just three Premier League appearances before May. Oh, and he…
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