Every club makes transfer mistakes.
It’s as certain as death, taxes, and Aston Villa disappearing from the Premier League quicker than a fart in the wind.
Some are expensive (Andy Carroll, Juan Sebastian Veron, Angel Di Maria etc), and some just turn out to be totally shit – Eric Djemba-Djemba, Roberto Soldado, Charles N’Zogbia etc.
But one club has a track record of bringing in some truly awful players:
Chelsea.
The Blues have seemingly never learnt their lesson. They signed Adrian Mutu, Andriy Shevchenko and Fernando Torres and watched on as they all failed to live up to their reputations.
But still they break out the chequebook and this season has been no different.
With that in mind, we thought we’d do a breakdown of Chelsea’s five biggest flops THIS SEASON.
You know it’s bad when you can pick five from the same fucking season.
Here’s who made the cut:
Papy Djilobodji (signed from Nantes, £2.7m)
Who?
Even some Chelsea fans won’t remember this bloke.
That’s because Djilobodji played just four minutes of action for Chelsea, as he replaced Radamel Falcao in a 4-1 win over League One side Walsall in the Capital One Cup.
Wow.
Since those four minutes (we’re reliably told that he was fucking excellent), the 6’4″ centre back has been loaned to Werder Bremen, where he’s made nine appearances so far, scoring one own goal and being investigated for a throat slitting gesture.
Chances are, he’s not going to add to those four minutes anytime soon.
Abdul Baba Rahman (signed from Augsburg, £21.7m)
Chelsea have something of a habit of signing left backs who turn out to be not very good.
In recent years they’ve had Filipe Luis (who’s rediscovered his touch at Atleti) and going further back, Asier Del Horno (what a player), and Rahman looks like another who won’t make the grade.
It speaks volumes that Chelsea’s best left back (Cesar Azpilicueta) is also their best right back. And that their second choice left back (Kenedy) is actually a striker.
Rahman is only 21, so he has time to improve and make the grade at Stamford Bridge, but given Chelsea’s tendancy to get rid of players who don’t make an instant impact, he could be on his way this summer.
Pedro (signed from Barcelona, £21m)
This one looked like great business when it happened.
What could go wrong? Signing a winger from Barcelona worked brilliantly for Arsenal, so why wouldn’t it for Chelsea?
Well that one’s still up for debate, but Pedro has been shite this season.
He started off well, tearing West Brom apart on his debut, scoring once and setting up Diego Costa for another.
But since then, he’s failed to live up to his reputation and struggled to hold down a regular place in Chelsea’s team.
He did score twice against Newcastle United, but then again, so could a blind man so that’s not enough to save him from the flop list.
Radamel Falcao (signed from Monaco, loan)
After a terrible season at Manchester United, Jose Mourinho gave Falcao another chance to prove himself in England.
Had it all gone well and Falcao stayed fit and scored goals, Jose would have looked like a footballing genius.
But he hasn’t, and Mourinho has since been fired.
Falcao has played just 222 minutes of Premier League action this season, scoring just once.
The fee to make the Colombian’s move permanent is set at £38m, and even Chelsea aren’t that stupid.
Recently, Falcao said he’d turned down two offers from China in order to stay and fight for his place at Stamford Bridge, but he can’t overcome a muscle injury and remains out of the picture.
But he’s still getting paid more than £150k a week, so don’t feel too sorry for him.
Alexandre Pato (signed from Corinthians, loan)
This one was strange, even by Chelsea’s standards.
Pato was good once. Once.
Ever since leaving AC Milan, the Brazilian’s prominence as one of the world’s best young strikers has diminished, so to see him get a loan to Chelsea raised a few eyebrows.
Add to that the fact that he was in the middle of a holiday after the Brazilian season finished in December, and it became even odder.
Pato has spent so much time getting fit that 19-year-old Bertrand Traore has moved ahead of him in the line, and looks pretty decent.
The 26-year-old hasn’t yet made his debut for Chelsea, meaning he’s unlikely to get a permanent move at the end of the season.
Rather amusingly, the literal translation of ‘Pato’ from Portuguese to English is ‘duck’. Chelsea fans would have been happier with Donald Duck rather than Pato.
