What a waste. These five players were signed for a combined £132.5m in the summer and have no Premier League starts between them.
Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall (Chelsea from Leicester, £30m)
Enzo Maresca’s first proper signing at Chelsea despite actually being the fourth, because Tosin Adarabioyo was free, Omari Kellyman was part of the PSR circle jerk and Marc Guiu was never likely to play. But as it turns out, Dewsbury hasn’t played all that much either.
He has played every minute of the games not in the Premier League, but he probably expected a bit more glitz and glamour having moved to Stamford Bridge than starts against Servette, Gent and Barrow, which sounds more like a New York law firm than a list of fixtures for one of the biggest clubs in Europe.
It’s just a bit of a shame really, not least because he’s looked pretty good in those games having been brilliant for Maresca at Leicester, and also because we could really see him thriving at a mid-table side.
But the longer he stays out of the Premier League team – and in truth we can’t see a way in for him without a couple of injuries – the more we think he was brought in as an auxiliary coach, a means of imparting Maresca’s ethos from within the squad to the better footballers around him to the point where his input isn’t required and Chelsea can take a £10m bath in selling him to West Ham.
Luis Guilherme (West Ham from Palmeiras, £20m)
After chasing him for weeks and making several trips to Brazil, technical director Tim Steidten secured the £20m signing of Guilherme, making the 18-year-old the first signing of the Julen Lopetegui era. It was considered quite the coup.
It seems as though every teen hailing from Palmeiras must be dubbed a Brazilian wonderkid, but Guilherme was linked with both Bayern Munich and Chelsea in January and has been likened in his homeland to a certain Ronaldinho. He dovetailed nicely with Endrick last term, who moved to Real Madrid and has featured (albeit briefly in the most part) in nine of their 11 games so far this season.
Guilherme meanwhile has made just one four-minute cameo for West Ham, when victory was already sewn up against Ipswich last time out, and we can’t help but feel that being a bit like Ronaldinho is more a reason for renowned system-focused manager Lopetegui not to hand him game time than to make Guilherme his mercurial star attraction.
Archie Gray (Tottenham from Leeds, £35m)
He’s played every minute of Spurs’ two Europa League games and the Carabao Cup win over Coventry and impressed, playing either at right-back or centre-back. And it’s perfectly possible to see him being limited to just three substitute appearances in the Premier League as good management by Ange Postecoglou of a young man.
But at no point during his time in Leeds’ first team did Gray look like a player in need of protection, rather one who takes every challenge in their languid stride, usually looking like the best footballer on the pitch in the process.
And it is odd that while Spurs throw away leads thanks in large part to an incredibly soft centre that requires one half-decent pass from an opposition player to split them right open, Gray – famed for his ability to put his foot on the ball and control games – is yet to start a game in midfield.
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Ian Maatsen (Aston Villa from Chelsea, £37.5m)
His excellent form in Borussia Dortmund’s Champions League run (before he made a bit of a mess of things in the final) made what could have looked like a very grubby PSR-enforced deal look reasonable.
Aston Villa ended up paying roughly Maatsen’s market value to avoid what has in any case turned out to be a level of sanction from the Premier League fair-market-price checkers akin to those available to Community Support Officers. £20m for Odysseas Vlachodimos, you say? Seems fine.
Adding to the sense that Maatsen’s transfer wasn’t entirely above board is his inability to get past Lucas Digne to secure a spot in Aston Villa’s first team. He’s made ten appearances thus far under Unai Emery, all from the bench save the Carabao Cup victory over Wycombe.
While he may well usurp the Frenchman at some point this season, we’ve got to wonder why they were quite so motivated to sign someone who is – at best – a minor improvement on what Emery already had at his disposal.
Federico Chiesa (Liverpool from Juventus, £10m)
Who would have thought he might not play? *cough*
The patience Richard Hughes and Michael Edwards displayed by not chasing unsuitable alternatives to Martin Zubimendi suggests we were wide of the mark in claiming Chiesa’s transfer stank of desperation from a club in need of signing someone, anyone to appease the fans, but we’ve thus far been justified in our suggestion that his signing was almost entirely pointless.
Aside from the Carabao Cup win over West Ham Chiesa’s made two substitute appearances totalling 19 minutes, strangely unable as yet to nail down a starting spot on the right wing for Liverpool. And while Reds fans will cry foul over us hammering a player who’s missed the last two games with a muscle problem, further additions to a long list of his injuries hardly provides evidence of him being a useful addition to the squad.
