£134m worth of Big Six strikers who made the same mistake

Benjamin Sesko is apparently so desperate to move to the Premier League that after Arsenal snubbed him in favour of Viktor Gyokeres and as Liverpool close in on Hugo Ekitike he actually ‘wants’ to move to the worst Manchester United team in living memory and ‘favours a move to Old Trafford over other destinations’.

Are there really no ‘other destinations’, Benjamin?

Anyway, he’s ‘willing to forgo European football’ next season assuming Sir Jim Ratcliffe can find a spare £70m hidden under the now defunct Carrington canteen’s floorboards. But both United and Sesko should perhaps be wary of moving to a Big Six club with no European football in the offing on the basis of these eight previous strikers who forwent…

Michy Batshuayi (Marseille to Chelsea, £33m)

Hard to know whether he thinks his goal off the bench at The Hawthorns to seal the title in May 2017 made it all worth it, but Batshuayi probably hoped for more than 77 appearances in a six-year stint on Chelsea’s books, albeit with much of that time spent out on loan at Borussia Dortmund, Valencia, Crystal Palace and Besiktas.

He’s not managed to replicate the 17-goal season that persuaded Chelsea to sign him since – which, incidentally, is more than Sesko has scored in any league campaign so far – though did get 14 for Besiktas and then 12 in consecutive seasons for Fenerbahce.

Christopher Nkunku (RB Leipzig to Chelsea, £52m)

He’s a talented footballer at a fork in the road. One turn could see him make a brilliant move and do a Mohamed Salah or Kevin De Bruyne having escaped Chelsea; the other could see him fade into obscurity while his value plummets, either as an afterthought if he remains at Stamford Bridge under Enzo Maresca, or in a new but unsuitable setting. The latter feels far more likely as it stands, particularly if that setting is Old Trafford.

Nicolas Jackson (Villarreal to Chelsea, £32m)

He’s never been as bad as his critics have made him out to be, nor as good as Chelsea have needed him to be, which is a rotten position to be in for a footballer.

It really can’t feel great to have been told for two years at Chelsea that you should be a backup striker rather than the main man and then in the space of a few weeks be moved down to third in the pecking order behind Liam Delap and Joao Pedro while having an unreasonably large asking price slapped on your head to make a move elsewhere very unlikely.

Iago Aspas (Celta Vigo to Liverpool, £8m)

It’s fair to say he wasn’t given much of a chance of success by Brendan Rogers, who handed Aspas just five Premier League starts in his only season at Liverpool, but he’s a great example for Sesko as to how good life can be after a failed move to a big Premier League club.

He had a brief inauspicious season at Sevilla before returning to his boyhood club, for whom he’s scored a total of 214 goals – 164 of them in his second spell – to make him their all-time leading goalscorer by a 100-goal margin. And he’s still banging them in at the age of 37.

Craig Bellamy (Manchester City to Liverpool, free)

He had a big hand in Liverpool winning the League Cup, assisting both goals in the 2-0 quarter-final win over Chelsea and scoring the crucial goal against City in the second leg of the semi-final. But didn’t play all that much in the Premier League before moving to Cardiff after one season.

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Alejo Veliz (Rosario Central to Tottenham, £13m)

It’s not clear whether Daniel Levy signed Veliz purely on the basis of Lionel Messi claiming “watching him play reminds me of what Suarez used to play like”, but he was entirely duped in any case.

His Cristiano Ronaldo contract of a Tottenham career has cost them £288,000 per minute, though in fairness Veliz must boast one of the best goals-per-minute ratios in Premier League history having scored against Brighton in one of his eight brief cameos from the bench. They’re now desperately trying to send him back to Rosario Central for peanuts.

Peter Crouch (Portsmouth to Tottenham, £9m)

It felt at the time as though Crouch was doing rather better at Tottenham than his goals return suggests. Twenty-four in 93 really isn’t great, admittedly made up for in part by 20 assists. He did bang in a hat-trick against Young Boys in the Champions League qualifying round in his second season though, before four goals in the tournament proper, including the only goal across two legs in the last-16 clash against AC Milan and Alessandro Nesta.

Radamel Falcao (Monaco to Manchester United, loan)

Comfortably the best striker on this list, which also probably makes him the biggest flop given what he produced in comparison to his achievements either side of his Premier League dalliance.

For Porto, Atletico Madrid and Monaco before and just after his time in England, Falcao scored 223 goals in 317 games. For United and Chelsea he managed just five in 31.

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