Liverpool have got themselves in a right pickle with all of Virgil Van Dijk, Mohamed Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold out of contract in the summer and free to leave for nothing should they so wish.
As things stand Alexander-Arnold and Mohamed Salah, valued by Transfermarkt at £60m and £46m respectively, would be the most highly valued free transfer exits in Premier League history, comfortably beating current leader Paul Pogba (£40m), while Van Dijk (£25m) would easily make it into the top ten.
But this isn’t a top 10 of the most highly valued exits but the worst blunders, i.e. which players really shouldn’t have been allowed to leave on a free transfer.
We suspect at least one, probably two, if not all three of the Liverpool stars will likely make the cut here in future too, but there’s no space for your Pogbas, Aaron Ramseys or Georgina Wijnaldums because we very quickly forgot about them.
10) Che Adams (Southampton to Torino, £12.5m)
A surprise transfer to say the least but Serie A is the place for the Scots these days and he got off to a rip-roaring start in Serie A with four goals and two assists before the end of September, by which point Southampton as a whole had scored four goals in the Premier League.
9) Mark Viduka (Middlesbrough to Newcastle, £4.5m)
A bad move for all concerned really. Middlesbrough got nothing for the guy who finished as their top scorer the season before with 14 Premier League goals, Newcastle only got seven out of him in 40 appearances and Viduka retired at the end of his second season at St James’ Park having barely played thanks to various injuries, with caretaker manager Alan Shearer blaming the striker’s lack of fitness for the club’s relegation to the second tier.
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8) Vincent Kompany (Manchester City to Anderlecht, £6.75m)
Captain Fantastic’s screamer away at Leicester at the end of the 2018/2019 season was the perfect way to say goodbye as it all-but secured another Premier League title for Manchester City, and it felt like the right time too as injuries took their toll.
It wasn’t allowing Kompany to leave that was the problem for City but their strange decision not to then replace the greatest centre-back in their history. Liverpool stormed to the title the following season with Pep Guardiola belatedly remedying his misstep by signing all the centre-backs. He’s about the only club legend – and there have been a lot of them – whose exit has had a significant effect on the winning machine.
7) Wilfried Zaha (Crystal Palace to Galatasaray, £18.5m)
Although they weren’t in direct competition for a spot in the team, Zaha’s exit allowed space for Michael Olise to come to the fore at Selhurst Park, and although Zaha was The Main Man at Palace season after season, there was a sense in the last couple that he was becoming a crutch that was actually hampering progress. He was continually linked with big-money moves before eventually leaving for nothing, and ripping off the plaster before the end of his contract would likely have seen £40m-£60m added to the coffers.
6) Danny Welbeck (Arsenal to Watford, £10m)
A recent report suggested Erik ten Hag wanted Welbeck back at Manchester United in the summer and there are plenty – including Ferguson and Gary Neville – who believe it was a mistake to let him go to Arsenal. He’s aged like a fine wine, scoring goals at quite the lick for Brighton now thanks in large part to a prolonged period without injury. We can’t imagine Mikel Arteta would turn his nose up at having someone of his experience and quality to call upon right now given his limited options up front.
5) Jefferson Lerma (Bournemouth to Crystal Palace, £17m)
Bournemouth offered multiple new contracts but Lerma was adamant he “wanted a new challenge”, which made more sense if that meant a move to Villarreal, who were also in for him, over Crystal Palace. The draw of London, perhaps. Anyway, the Bournemouth boob was more in allowing the Colombian’s five-year contract to run into its final year before offering new terms.
As Liverpool are now finding out to their cost, the proximity of the end of the deal leads to speculation and allows space for heads to turn to the point where the grass will always look greener elsewhere.
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4) Youri Tielemans (Leicester to Aston Villa, £21m)
What can a club do when a player doesn’t want to sign a new contract? Sell them before that contract expires. We refuse to believe that there would have been no takers for Youri Tielemans in the summer of 2022, a year before the end of his contract. All of Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal had been linked with the Belgium international, who quite clearly didn’t still want to be at Leicester in his final season at the club, when they were relegated from the Premier League.
3) Ander Herrera (Manchester United to PSG, £21m)
The midfielder was reduced to tears on the UTD podcast when discussing his exit from Manchester United: “I got the Player of the Year award by the fans and the club didn’t call me that summer to sign a new contract, and they did with other players. That was painful for me, honestly.”
Herrera won the individual gong on the back of United’s most successful post-Sir Alex Ferguson season, in which he played a key role in their League Cup and Europa League titles, and memorably man-marked Eden Hazard out of a clash with Chelsea in perhaps the defining game of his United career.
But the new contract didn’t arrive then and a lame offer as his deal came to a close was comfortably improved by PSG.
2) Angel Gomes (Manchester United to Lille, £3m)
Gomes became United’s youngest player in the Premier League era when Jose Mourinho handed him his debut aged just 16 on the final day of the 2016/17 season, but he made just nine further appearances in the three seasons after that debut, during which time Mourinho called him out in front of his teammates and no-one at Carrington provided a clear indication that there was any sort of path to the first team.
Four years on from his Old Trafford exit and Gomes is now a full England international, may very well be The Answer to the No.6 conundrum for Thomas Tuchel, just as he could have been for the Red Devils.
1) Antonio Rudiger (Chelsea to Real Madrid, £33.5m)
He left over two years ago and Chelsea have been struggling with his absence ever since. He was a key part of the Champions League win in 2021 and is evidently a wonderful defender, and while Chelsea have undoubtedly missed the quality and aggression we’ve since seen in his titanic battles with Erling Haaland, it’s Rudiger’s leadership that the Blues could really have used through this bonkers period under the new owners.
