Andre Villas-Boas has resigned from his role as Marseille coach, with the final straw seemingly being the signing of Oliver Ntcham from Celtic to replace Morgan Samson.
“I have resigned because I don’t agree with the sporting policy of the club,” Villas-Boas told a press conference. “I said no to the signing of Olivier Ntcham. He wasn’t on our list. I like Marseille but I am a professional. When you want to give me a guy who has no similarities with the characteristics of the guy who left…”
Villas-Boas is hardly the first manager to have thrust upon him a player he didn’t ask for…
Joelinton
One day, we’ll discover the truth behind the Joelinton mystery. What made Mike Ashley, the notoriously thrifty Newcastle owner, open his wallet to double the club’s transfer record and pay £40million for a forward who had never hit double figures in Bundesligas German and Austrian?
It’s not as though Rafa Benitez wanted him. Ashley has admitted that when the prospect of signing Joelinton was put to him, Benitez rated him at half the price the owner had already agreed to pay Hoffenheim who, presumably, couldn’t believe their luck.
Ashley told the Daily Mail in 2019:
“He thought the £40m for Joelinton wasn’t worth it. It’s too much and the club shouldn’t spend it.
“Very occasionally, I get to be me in this world. So here’s the deal. I’ll pay £20million of it personally. Nothing to do with the club. Above and beyond the budget. Rafa valued him at £20m. So that’s what would come out of the club budget. The rest, £23m – I’ll pay. And he still didn’t sign it off. Looking back, I think he knew for a long time he was going to China because it was like we couldn’t do anything. Joelinton was the test.
‘Why on earth would you not want that? As a football manager, with all the things you have said, why wouldn’t you want Joelinton?”
Because he’s as much a Premier League centre-forward as you are, Mike.
January 2021 transfer window: Winners | Losers
Mario Balotelli
Benitez didn’t hang around to welcome Joelinton. Brendan Rodgers had little choice but to plough on with Balotelli.
Balotelli arrived in the summer of 2014, just after Liverpool had sold Luis Suarez and missed out on Alexis Sanchez, who Rodgers felt would be ‘perfect’ for his team. But instead, he was presented with Balotelli and left to make the best of it.
After being sacked in 2015 – having insisted during his reign that he had final say on transfers – Rodgers told Sky Sports:
“What we wanted and what we needed was a player who could really press at the top end of the field. It wasn’t just a goalscorer we were after.
“I felt Mario was someone who wouldn’t work for us. But come the end of the summer, we were struggling to get someone who could do the role we wanted. I think the ownership group thought that this could be a player I could develop.
“They were thinking that maybe he is a £50million player that we can get for £16million. So, when the owners are wanting you to go down that route and there is no other options, then of course you give it a go.”
Balotelli scored a single Premier League goal and was eventually released a year before the end of his contract.
Xisco and Ignacio Gonzalez
Rafa wasn’t the first Newcastle manager to have signings forced upon him. Kevin Keegan walked after Ashley’s director of football Dennis Wise and Tony Jimenez signed a couple of players as ‘a favour for two South American agents’.
Xisco was the face of a five-year contract worth £60,000 a week, for which he gave Newcastle nine appearances in five years. Ignacio Gonzalez, on £26,ooo a week, was an even more curious arrival. Ashley, apparently, was of the view that the Uruguayan didn’t have to “set foot in St James’ Park” if Keegan didn’t want him under his feet, as long as he was ‘parked’ on Tyneside.
Understandably, the whole sorry saga made Keegan uncomfortable enough to quit, for all the reasons he lays out here.
READ MORE: Keegan reveals two transfers that made him leave Newcastle
Andriy Shevchenko
When you’re richer than God, like Roman Abramovich, then you are bound to allow yourself the odd indulgence. Yachts, mansions, past-their-best strikers…
That was how Abramovich treated himself in 2006. By paying AC Milan around £30million for the 29-year-old, the Chelsea owner broke the British transfer record to lavish upon Jose Mourinho a megastar, then the most prolific striker in Champions League history, to strengthen his back-to-back title winners.
But Mourinho didn’t share Abramovich’s passion for the owner’s new toy and it became clear why. In 48 appearances, he failed to reach double figures.
Upon leaving Chelsea in 2007, Mourinho explained how the Shevchenko signing came about and why he struggled.
“He was like a prince in Milan and at Chelsea our philosophy was different, we had no princes. Everybody needs to work like everybody else and everybody needs to prove he deserves to play.
“I think maybe he lost some self-confidence. Step by step a player goes in the wrong direction.
“He was not my first option but the club gave him to me as a second option.
“I believe in the future he will again be a player of high quality. The truth is I never had a single personal problem with him and I wish him well for the future.”
One-per-club: Players stuck after January window shut
Paul Pogba
It’s has been a recurring problem for Mourinho, if his friend and former spokesperson is to be believed.
Upon becoming Manchester United manager in 2016, Mourinho was presented with another British record signing in the shape of Pogba. It always seemed an uneasy relationship to the point when it broke down completely prior to the midfielder dancing upon the manager’s grave when he was given the bullet in 2018.
After Mourinho left United, Eladio Parames gave his version of events around Pogba’s arrival.
“Sometimes there are reasons beyond sports that lead the clubs, and not always the coaches, to gamble on hiring players.
“Pogba, for example, is worth a lot in the advertising market, so much so that in just six months Manchester United had already recovered what they had invested in him.
“However, without terriers like Blaise Matuidi and N’Golo Kante at his side, he is worth virtually nothing on the field.
“Man United did not give Mourinho terriers despite advice given to Ed Woodward last summer.
“And as a result, we had to see Nemanja Matic and Scott McTominay acting as central defenders against Southampton.
“And Mourinho had to watch as Pogba became the player who most often lost the ball and was dispossessed, in a single game, in all Premier League matches this season. A great record!”
Most of Chelsea’s new boys
Apparently, of Chelsea’s signings this summer, Frank Lampard wanted none of them who weren’t named Ben Chilwell.
The Blues spent £220million, with The Athletic claiming that £175million went on players that were recruited above the manager’s head, namely Thiago Silva, Hakim Ziyech, Kai Havertz and Timo Werner. And Petr Cech had a big role in bringing in Edouard Mendy. Lampard apparently wanted James Tarkowski, Declan Rice and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
But that’s just how it works at Chelsea and Lampard was hardly in the dark when he signed up for it.
Uncle Harry added further weight to the claim of his nephew’s lack of input.
“The recruitment for me in the summer, all the money they spent, I don’t think they spent it well. I’ve not been impressed with the players they’ve brought in apart from Thiago Silva who they brought in on a free transfer, the rest of them there are big question marks over.
“The two German players have been massive disappointments, massive. I’m not even sure Timo Werner is cut out for Premier League football, the physical side is too much for him.
“I doubt very much whether Frank had a big say over in who came in.
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