Alexander-Arnold Liverpool leaves the top spot of the Premier League's worst free transfer blunders

Liverpool have gotten themselves into trouble as Virgil Van Dijk, Mohamed Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold lost their contracts this summer and were free to leave for nothing if they wanted to.

As things stand now Alexander Arnold and Mohamed Salah, appreciated by Transfer market At £60m and £46m respectively, these would be the highest-valued free transfers in Premier League history, comfortably beating current leader Paul Pogba (£40m), while Van Dijk (£25m) easily would make the top ten.

But this is not a top 10 of the most appreciated exits, but the worst blunders, i.e. those players who should not have left on a free transfer.

We suspect that at least one, probably two, if not all three Liverpool stars here will probably score in the future too, but there’s no room for your Pogbas, Aaron Ramseys or Georgina Wijnaldums as we’ll forget about them very quickly.

10) Che Adams (Southampton to Turin, £12.5m)
A surprising transfer to say the least, but Serie A is the place for the Scots these days and he got off to a great start in Serie A with four goals and two assists before the end of September, after which Southampton as a whole had scored four goals in the Premier League.

9) Mark Viduka (Middlesbrough to Newcastle, £4.5m)
Actually a bad move for everyone involved. Middlesbrough got nothing for the man who finished as top scorer with fourteen Premier League goals the season before, Newcastle scored just seven in forty appearances and Viduka retired at the end of his second season at St James’ Park having barely featured. to various injuries, with agent Alan Shearer blaming the striker’s lack of fitness for the club’s relegation to the second tier.

8) Vincent Kompany (Manchester City to Anderlecht, £6.75m)
Captain Fantastic’s shout-out at Leicester at the end of the 2018/2019 season was the perfect way to say goodbye but secure another Premier League title for Manchester City, and it also felt like the right time as injuries demanded tolls.

The problem for City was not allowing Kompany to leave, but their strange decision not to replace the greatest central defender in their history. Liverpool stormed to the title the following season, with Pep Guardiola belatedly correcting his misstep by signing all the centre-backs. He’s about the only club legend – and there have been many – whose departure has had a significant effect on the winning machine.

7) Wilfried Zaha (Crystal Palace to Galatasaray, £18.5m)
Although they were not competing directly for a place in the team, Zaha’s departure left room 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 still a feeling in the last few he was becoming a crutch that actually hindered progress. He was constantly linked with big-money moves before ultimately leaving for nothing, and if he were to pull the cast off before the end of his contract it would likely have added £40 to £60 million to the coffers.

6) Danny Welbeck (Arsenal to Watford, £10 million)
A recent report suggested Erik ten Hag wanted Welbeck back at Manchester United in the summer and there are plenty of them – including Ferguson and Gary Neville – who believe it was a mistake to let him go to Arsenal. He has aged like a fine wine and is now scoring goals for Brighton in a decent manner, largely thanks to a long spell without injuries. We can’t imagine Mikel Arteta would turn his nose up at the prospect of bringing in someone of his experience and quality at this point, given his limited options up front.

5) Jefferson Lerma (Bournemouth to Crystal Palace, £17 million)
Bournemouth offered several new contracts, but Lerma was adamant he “wanted a new challenge”, which made more sense if that meant a move to Villarreal, who also wanted him, rather than Crystal Palace. The lure of London perhaps. Regardless, the Bournemouth boob was more into allowing the Colombian’s five-year contract to enter its final year before offering new terms.

As Liverpool are now finding out to their detriment, the proximity to the end of the deal fuels speculation and gives room 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 if a player does not want to sign a new contract? Sell them before that contract expires. We refuse to believe that there would have been no candidates for Youri Tielemans in the summer of 2022, a year before the end of his contract. All of Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal were linked with the Belgium international, who clearly did not want to still 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, £21 million)
The midfielder was reduced to tears on the UTD podcast when discussing his departure from Manchester United: “I got the fans’ Player of the Year award and the club didn’t call me that summer to sign a new contract , and they did that with other players. That was painful for me, to be honest.”

Herrera won the individual gong thanks to United’s most successful season after Sir Alex Ferguson, in which he played a key role in their League Cup and Europa League titles, and memorably marked Eden Hazard from a clash with Chelsea in perhaps memorably man. the defining game of his United career.

But the new contract never materialized and a lackluster offer when his deal came to an end was comfortably bettered by PSG.

2) Angel Gomes (Manchester United to Lille, £3m)
Gomes became United’s youngest player of the Premier League era when Jose Mourinho handed him his debut at the age of 16 on the final day of the 2016/2017 season, but he has made just nine more appearances in the three seasons since that debut . Mourinho called him out in front of his teammates and no one at Carrington gave any clear indication that there was any kind of path to the first team.

Four years on from his departure from Old Trafford and Gomes now a full England international, this could well be the answer to Thomas Tuchel’s sixth conundrum, just as he could have been for the Red Devils.

1) Antonio Rudiger (Chelsea to Real Madrid, £33.5 million)
He left more than two years ago and Chelsea have been struggling with his absence ever since. He was a key part of the 2021 Champions League win and is clearly a great defender. While Chelsea have undoubtedly lacked the quality and aggression we have since seen in his titanic battles with Erling Haaland, it is Rudiger’s leadership that can really see the Blues win. used during this crazy period under the new owners.