The big transfers at Bolton Wanderers that just didn't add up

Whether it be wasted wages, an exorbitant transfer fee, or a big name who failed to live up to their reputation every club has has their fair share of transfer flops.

Here MARC ILES takes a look at some of the deals that fell way short of expectation...

14. Steve Fulton

Transfer mistakes from Bruce Rioch were as rare as hen’s teeth but the £225,000 paid for Scottish midfielder Fulton in the close season of 1993 will go down as money wasted at a time when it wasn’t in plentiful supply.

Highly rated at Celtic and capped at Under-21 level for his country, Fulton had been tipped by his former Parkhead boss Billy McNeil to be a star of the future.

He made a debut in the Anglo Italian Cup against Tranmere but ended up being farmed out on loan because of concerns over his fitness. Rochard Sneekes’ arrival in 1994 then pretty much spelled the end of his time at Bolton after making just seven appearances in total.

Fulton went on to have a decent career in Scotland with the likes of Falkirk and Hearts and his Bolton-born son plays for Swansea City in the Championship.

13. Peter Barnes

Winger Barnes had a stellar career with the likes of Manchester City and West Brom, playing 22 times for England, but was winding down his career when he arrived at Burnden on loan in 1987, aged 31. The spell was brief – a hamstring injury in his second game against Carlisle sending him back to Maine Road – but 12 months later Phil Neal felt he was worth another go.

Via spells at Port Vale, Hull and Portuguese side Farense SC, Barnes signed on a big money month-to-month contract but managed just four games. His final appearance was in a 4-0 defeat at Sheffield United in which he ripped off his shirt after being substituted.

12. Jermaine Beckford

Dougie Freedman worked the whole summer in 2013 to secure Beckford’s signing from Leicester City in what became a complicated deal. Official figures were never disclosed but sources at the King Power end claimed that Bolton paid £1.2million to buy out the former Leeds striker’s contract, as well as shouldering the majority of his £38,000-a-week contract.

Beckford’s record suggested a player who could guarantee goals – but he failed to get into double figures in either of the two seasons he wore a Bolton shirt.

11. Len Cantello

After surviving in the First Division in 1978/79, Wanderers splashed out £350,000 to land West Brom’s Len Cantello but his signing hung like a millstone around the club’s neck as they slumped to relegation and financial issues in the years to come.

Cantello did manage 97 appearances, scoring three goals, but by the time he played his last game – a 7-1 mauling at the hands of QPR on a plastic Loftus Road pitch – Wanderers were struggling to stay in Division Two.

10. Peter Beardsley

“He's a quality player who can offer us a wealth of experience," said Colin Todd after spending £450,000 to land former England international Beardsley from Newcastle United in August 1997. "I can see Peter playing at the top level for another two years."

Sadly, the veteran never saw eye-to-eye with the man who signed him. Denied the withdrawn striker’s role he had thrived in on Tyneside, Beardsley’s influence at Bolton was negligible.

He left – amid a torrent of tabloid tales detailing his unhappiness – for a loan spell with Manchester City and then on to Fulham.

9. Marvin Sordell

In the years since Sordell left Bolton he has talked frankly about the problems he encountered behind the scenes as he tried to settle after a £3.2million move from Watford on January deadline day 2012.

Bolton hierarchy do not come out well in Sordell’s account and whether a more compassionate approach to the mental wellness issues the England Under-21 striker was having could have made a success of the deal is up for debate.

Given Wanderers needed a signing capable of inspiring a fight against relegation from the Premier League, the signing of inexperienced youngster Sordell still looks hugely questionable.

8. Johan Elmander

Debate over whether Elmander was a bona-fide flop continues even 12 years after he first arrived on English shores from Toulouse in a deal worth £8.2million plus Norway international Daniel Braaten.

He certainly looked out of place under the man who signed him, Gary Megson, and though his industry off the ball was appreciated by team-mates, his lack of goals was hard to miss.

That changed under Owen Coyle. A more attacking, dynamic style of football coincided with Elmander’s best football for Bolton. But by that stage his contract was ticking down and the Sweden international’s relationship with Phil Gartside had deteriorated.

Elmander left for free having scored 22 goals in 108 games.

7. Ben Amos

A classic case of a player signed when his stock was high. Amos excelled for Wanderers whilst on loan from Manchester United in early 2015, convincing Neil Lennon to pay top dollar to bring him in as Adam Bodgan’s replacement the following summer.

What Lennon didn’t know was that Bolton had already hit a financial iceberg and were sinking quickly as Eddie Davies looked to sell the club. Amos’s form was admittedly patchy as the Whites were relegated from the Championship but the keeper ended up a pariah, spending the next three seasons out on loan at Cardiff, Millwall and Charlton and being continually lambasted over the size of his salary by new owner, Ken Anderson.

6. Steve McAnespie

Considering that by September 1995 Bolton’s record transfer was the £1.5million paid for Gerry Taggart, the £900,000 shelled out for full-back Steve McAnespie was a hefty slice of the budget.

The right-sided defender had played European football for Raith Rovers but made just seven starts in that ill-fated first season in the Premier League.

McAnespie did play more the following year as Bolton broke all sorts of records in their final year at Burnden Park but he never came close to substantiating the price tag, prompting Wanderers to sell him for £100,000 to Fulham in the summer of 1997.

5. Danny Shittu

Still the 20th most expensive signing in Bolton Wanderers’ history, Danny Shittu cost £2.2million when he signed from Watford in August 2008.

The muscular centre-half never looked comfortable at Bolton and though he went to the 2008 World Cup with Nigeria, crossing swords with Lionel Messi no less, he failed to find any sort of consistency at club level.

In September 2008 it was confirmed that Shittu had come to an agreement with the club to terminate his contract – which by that point had cost Bolton £160,000 per game.

4. David Ngog

Who knows where the softly-spoken French striker would have featured on this list had Owen Coyle succeeded in wrestling him from Liverpool a summer earlier, for considerably more than the £4million eventually paid?

What cannot be in doubt is that Ngog never fulfilled the promise that he had shown in patches at Anfield, his tally of eight goals in the 2012/13 Championship campaign the best he managed in two-and-a-half seasons with the club.

It speaks volumes, perhaps, that after recouping £500,000 for Ngog from Swansea City in January 2014, Bolton manager Dougie Freedman said the deal had been “very, very good business.”

3. Christian Wilhelmsson

Sammy Lee’s vision of a free-flowing, dynamic Wanderers never came close to fruition in the months after Sam Allardyce’s shock departure in 2007, and a lot of that was down to the failure of signings like Wilhelmsson.

Signed on loan from Nantes at great expense, the jet-heeled winger looked a very impressive addition to a much-changed Bolton squad. Yet Wilhelmsson’s contribution to the Bolton cause proved to be practically nothing, as Lee’s reign ended abruptly and his successor, Gary Megson, made it abundantly clear he was not interested.

A few unremarkable games in Europe mean Wilhelmsson’s name will perhaps live on in Bolton via pub quizzes in the future – but there was very little about his work on the pitch that hinted at his pedigree CV.

2. Ibrahim Ba

Hailed as a “fantastic acquisition” by Sam Allardyce when he signed a short-term deal in September 2003, ex-AC Milan flyer Ba looked anything but.

On paper, the 30-year-old should have been one of Wanderers’ Galacticos but as his time at the San Siro had ended acrimoniously, Allardyce maintained he would need time to get physically and mentally prepared for the Premier League.

By the end of his first contract Ba had played just seven times for the club. Nevertheless he dug in his heels for a better deal – even threatening to pull out of an FA Cup squad bound for Tranmere – and signed until the end of the season.

Eight appearances later he was on his way for good. Ba humbug.

1. Mario Jardel

It is easy to see why Sam Allardyce felt he was on to a winner when he signed the Brazilian striker, a two-time European Golden Boot winner, and still the right side of 30 for an upfront fee of £1.5million from Sporting Lisbon in August 2003.

A name on par with pedigrees like Youri Djorkaeff or Jay-Jay Okocha, Jardel had scored goals everywhere he had been, so it was no surprise to learn he was one of the biggest earners in the squad at more than £1m a year.

What Bolton got, however, was a player visibly out of shape – earning him the cruel terrace nickname ‘Lardel’ - and seemingly unable to play himself into form.

Two goals against Walsall in the Carling Cup, followed by another in the same competition against Liverpool, represented the sum total of his input at Bolton.

After some high-profile spats with the club, who threatened to tear up his contract for continually missing training, Jardel’s nightmare ended in the summer of 2004 when he signed for Italian side Ancona on loan, then permanently for Argentine side Newell’s Old Boys.

In later years he would admits a divorce, plus battles against depression and drugs had been the major cause of his downfall.