We take a look at one loan player per Premier League club who probably won’t be welcomed back with open arms. Buyers needed but buyers beware.
ARSENAL: Nicolas Pepe
Mikel Arteta has ‘no plans to reintegrate’ Nicolas Pepe. Frankly, we would have been astonished if he had any plans at all for the £72m flop who last scored for Arsenal in February 2022. The Gunners must now somehow find a buyer for Pepe, with Nice underwhelmed by the Ivory Coast man during a loan spell that brought six Ligue Un goals by mid-January and then a hefty knee injury.
ASTON VILLA: Wesley
A club-record £22m transfer, the Brazilian international (!) has been nothing short of a disaster for Villa. Five Premier League goals in his first season was a pretty poor return, but then there was an ACL injury, followed by three loans that have reaped a grand total of three league goals in two years. Will his three La Liga 2 goals for Levante tempt them into a permanent £11m move? Would it tempt you?
BOURNEMOUTH: Siriki Dembele
Bought from Peterborough for £1.5m in January 2022, he was moved out on loan to Auxerre a year later after getting precisely zero starts under Gary O’Neil, who was then gifted a winger or two in the January window. Dembele then contributed zero goals or assists as Auxerre were relegated so a permanent deal should be filed under ‘unlikely’.
BRENTFORD: Sergi Canos
The tweet on his loan exit to Olympiakos – ‘After 249 matches I have to say goodbye to you all. Wherever I go, I will always be proud to have been a Brentford player’ – suggested he would not be back, but you can’t keep a good Bee down and his contract has since been extended and head coach Thomas Frank said: “Last season was difficult for Sergi. His start to the season was delayed by injury and he didn’t feel he made enough appearances for us. This summer, we need to get Sergi fit, back to his best, and making a big contribution for us.”
BRIGHTON: Steven Alzate
After starting just five Premier League games in 2021/22 as Brighton’s midfield soared with Alexis Mac Allister, Moises Caicedo and Yves Bissouma, the Colombian international went on loan to Standard Liege after a move to West Brom fell through. “The lifestyle isn’t great. There isn’t a lot to do out here, but it’s really good because I’m playing regularly,” said Alzate, who returns to Brighton after a successful loan to a) meet and b) hopefully impress Roberto de Zerbi.
BURNLEY: Wout Weghorst
Still technically a Burnley player, though he spent last season at Besiktas and then bizarrely Manchester United, where he scored zero Premier League goals while playing as a false No. 9.
CHELSEA: Romelu Lukaku
Chelsea would quite like to get some money back on their £100m-plus signing, thank you, but realistically the best they can hope for is that Inter Milan will take the Belgian and his wages off their hands for another season after a 14-goal campaign that ended in a comedically bad Champions League final.
CRYSTAL PALACE: Luke Plange
Bought for £1m from Derby in January 2022, Plange started last season on the Premier League bench for Palace and ended it on a League One bench in Lincoln. Palace desperately need a reliable goalscorer and Plange – no goals in 18 League One games for Lincoln – does not appear to be the answer.
EVERTON: Andre Gomes
Genuinely forgot this handsome b**tard existed. Does not instinctively feel like a Sean Dyche player and the man with the gravel voice will be incensed to learn that the Portuguese midfielder is taking home £120,000 a week. His loan spell at Lille was decent but unspectacular so good luck getting even close to half that £22m fee back.
FULHAM: Kevin Mbabu
Signed for £5m last summer, the Swiss right-back convinced Marco Silva to give him only one Premier League start…which ended with Newcastle 3-0 up at half-time. In February – after about five January minutes when he looked like he might bizarrely sign for Manchester United – he was shipped off to Servette on loan with little prospect of his Fulham career being rescued.
LIVERPOOL: Sepp van den Berg
Four years, four Liverpool games and two loans after arriving at Liverpool, the young Dutchman might finally be about to leave the club on a permanent basis, with Mainz apparently so impressed with his injury-ravaged loan spell at Schalke that they could offer him Champions League football next season.
LUTON TOWN: Dion Pereira
The former Watford trainee played four minutes of Championship football for Luton in May 2021 and has since had two loan spells at Bradford City with the possibility of a third feeling very remote after one goal in the League Two promotion race. He didn’t even get off the bench in the play-offs.
MANCHESTER CITY: Joao Cancelo
Half a season for the Treble winners and then Pep Guardiola casually sent him on loan to Bayern Munich, where he did okay but not well enough to justify a permanent transfer. Arsenal are inevitably interested in the three-times title winner but so are Barcelona, and when they come in swinging their d***s, there is usually only one ending…
MANCHESTER UNITED: Eric Bailly
A seven-game ban for hospitalising a fourth-tier opponent was the low point of Eric Bailly’s Marseille spell but it barely got any better as he started only five Ligue Un games. They will not be taking up their option to buy.
NEWCASTLE UNITED: Isaac Hayden
The midfielder’s final games for Newcastle were 3-1 and 4-0 defeats before a knee injury that saw him watch the club start spending from the sidelines in January 2022. Further knee injuries restricted him to just nine Championship starts on loan with Norwich, and he returns to Newcastle with Eddie Howe very clear that he belonged to a very different Magpies era.
NOTTINGHAM FOREST: Lewis O’Brien
Six Premier League starts and heady talk of England honours after a summer move from Huddersfield became despair as he was left out of Forest’s squad following further January arrivals before a transfer to Blackburn fell through at the 11th hour. But all was forgiven as O’Brien moved to DC United to play under Wayne Rooney. He is due back next month to find an even bigger Forest squad than ever.
SHEFFIELD UNITED: Jake Eastwood
Eleven different loans – the last a spell at Rochdale that saw him fail to win any of his seven games – suggest that goalkeeper Eastwood is not about to make an impact on the Premier League.
TOTTENHAM: Tanguy Ndombele
An actual title winner with Napoli, though he did not get off the bench for the last five Serie A games of the season, Tottenham’s former record signing could – in theory at least – be an asset for Ange Postecoglou, who has room for a box-to-box midfielder in his system.
WEST HAM: Nikola Vlasic
Torino want the Croatian midfielder after a five-goal season but they want to negotiate his price down from the agreed £12m, amid reports that the Hammers have avoided payments to CSKA Moscow for a player who started just six Premier League games under David Moyes before being shipped out on loan. Vlasic and Moyes agree that he has no future at West Ham.
WOLVES: Goncalo Guedes
A £27.5m signing from Valencia, Guedes was frankly rotten in the opening weeks of the season for Wolves – where he was clearly unhappy – before going on loan to his first love Benfica for the second half of the season. There was an assumption of a second loan but a combination of high wages and ongoing injury issues mean that the Portuguese champions are in no rush at all.