The heart-breakers: Wanderers players who have gone on the cheap

Just for fun, we look back at some of the heart-breakers who moved on to pastures new for a fee that didn’t exactly reflect their true market value.

GARY CAHILL

Speculation had raged for more than 12 months about Cahill’s future, and a club record fee looked on the cards as Manchester City, Tottenham, Arsenal and Chelsea vied for his services. Then a newly-capped England international, the centre-back was at the top of his game – and it is strongly rumoured that a bid of £17million was turned down in the hope a bidding war would be triggered. It wasn’t, and Cahill left for Stamford Bridge several months later, his contract in its final year, for just £7m.

PETER REID

One of the best players ever to emerge from the Wanderers youth team, Reid’s meteoric rise was checked by a broken leg sustained against Everton in January 1979. He returned a year later and was courted by the Blues, Arsenal and Wolves only to suffer another broken leg in a league game at Barnsley in September 1981. After another comeback, he was eventually prised away to Goodison Park for just £60,000, going on to play for England and win a flurry of trophies.

DAVID JACK

As legend has it, Wanderers were in financial difficulty in October 1928 when representatives of the club met with Arsenal manager, Herbert Chapman, and his assistant in a hotel bar.

The Bolton contingent were afforded plenty of drink, and agreed to sell the England international for a world record £10,750 – a fee the Gunners regarded as quite a saving.

Jack went on to help the North London side to three league titles and cement his status as one of the leading players of the day.

ANDY WALKER

Forever a legend for his goal-scoring exploits alongside John McGinlay in the 1992/93 promotion season, the Scottish striker suffered a bad knee injury against Swansea in April 1993 which kept him out of action until the following February. By then, Bruce Rioch had other striking options but Walker’s move to Celtic under the freedom of contract rule recouped just £550,000 – a fee still regarded as extraordinarily low for a player of his calibre.

MARCOS ALONSO

Now one of the Premier League’s top wing-backs and a full Spain international, Alonso will go down as one of the better bits of business Owen Coyle did at Bolton. Joined at one stage by compatriot Rodrigo – another superstar in the making – Alonso proved to be a late bloomer in a Bolton shirt. The trouble is, by the time Dougie Freedman had installed him as a first team regular, Fiorentina had spotted his talent and he was signed for a training fee, never disclosed, in the summer of 2013.

FRANK WORTHINGTON

Just a year after finishing up as the First Division’s top goal-scorer, Worthington went to Birmingham City in October 1979 for £150,000, much to the chagrin of thousands of adoring supporters at Burnden Park. The fee was just £60,000 more than Bolton had paid to Leicester two years earlier.

STEVE THOMPSON

Another academy product who was on course to leave for big money – only for financial issues at Burnden Park to force a cut price exit. Thompson was the longest-serving player in a squad which had missed out in two successive play-offs under Phil Neal when he left in August 1991 for Luton Town, costing £220,000.

CLAUS JENSEN

The Danish midfielder had become a classy operator and a full international following his move from Lyngby in 1998 but Sam Allardyce had to sell him to Charlton for just £4million after Wanderers had been rather unceremoniously denied promotion via a play-off defeat to Ipswich Town. The money did, however, pay for Per Frandsen’s return – shortly after his own cut-price exit to Blackburn Rovers.

EIDUR GUDJOHNSEN

Although Wanderers picked up the Icelandic striker for next to nothing and built him into a world class front man, the £4milion fee they received from Chelsea in the summer of 2000 still looks cheap today. His sale was another by-product of Bolton’s inability to beat Ipswich in the play-offs. Cheers Barry Knight.

CHUNG-YONG LEE

The Korean midfielder had never quite returned to his Premier League pomp after a badly-broken leg but he was still a class act when Wanderers were playing Championship football in 2015. The club’s shaky financial situation allowed Crystal Palace to pinch him for just £700,000.

ROB HOLDING

The sale of a young defender who had only completed one season in senior football was sadly inevitable as Bolton were relegated out of the Championship in 2015/16. News broke on the final day of the season – as the team played at Fulham – that Arsenal had swooped to sign him but the fee, just £2million up front, never sat well with fans. Extra bonuses were included in the contract by Wanderers owner, Ken Anderson. And the Gunners even advanced some of the payments to help Bolton out again in 2017 but compared to the prices other young defenders of Holding’s promise have fetched, even a top-line £4m looks cheap.

PAUL FLETCHER

All hell broke loose when homegrown youngster Paul Fletcher was allowed to join Burnley for £66,000 – not least on the back page of The Bolton Evening News, who poured scorn on the club’s board for selling him on the cheap. The money was not reinvested well, either, with replacements failing to make the grade.

JOHAN ELMANDER

That Wanderers got nothing for the most expensive transfer in their history rather paints a bad picture of the business they did at times in the Premier League era. The Sweden international arrived from Toulouse for £8.2m plus Norwegian striker Daniel Braaten in June 2008 but never quite lived up to his billing, struggling at first under the labour-intensive tactics of the man who signed him, Gary Megson. His goal-scoring return improved under Owen Coyle but by that stage his contract was expiring and a Bosman move to Turkey represented a lucrative move. Bolton’s efforts to convince him otherwise amounted to nothing and he walked away for free.

AARON MOOY

Given the Australian’s valuation right now (£14million on Transfermrkt) it seems odd to think Wanderers let him walk away for nothing as a teenager.

Mooy was highly-rated by the academy staff but quit the club in 2010 after they failed to offer him a professional deal. He moved on via St Mirren and the A-League to the Premier League, where he earned plaudits at Huddersfield Town for the last couple of years.

MARTIN DOBSON

Allowed to leave for nothing after playing youth team football at Burnden Park, the midfielder went on to become an England international and make more than 600 career appearances with the likes of Burnley, Bury and Everton – where he was once the first player transferred for £300,000.

TAL BEN HAIM

The writing was probably on the wall for Bolton when they failed to get the Israeli defender to commit to a new deal in 2007. The club had paid just £150,000 for him from Maccabi Tel Aviv two years earlier but Ben Haim – a versatile defender in the prime of his career – would secure a free transfer to Chelsea, never one to miss a bargain from these parts.

NEIL REDFEARN

Came through the Bolton ranks with an exciting crop of home-grown players but departed for Lincoln City in 1984 for a measly £20,000. The midfielder went on to have a good career with the likes of Barnsley, Bradford and Charlton in the top flight.

BLERIM DZEMAILI

Swiss midfielder who arrived at Bolton from FC Zurich in the summer of 2007 nursing a long-term knee injury. Dzemaili got back to fitness but hardly made a dent under Gary Megson, eventually signing for Torino for around £1.3m. Considering he then went on to command big fees in Serie A at Bologna and Napoli, plus a move to Galatasaray, Wanderers have every right to feel short-changed.