Reijnders joins most expensive XI who only lasted one season in the Premier League | OneFootball

Tijjani Reijnders leaving Manchester City just one year after joining for more than £45m is quite the turn of events.

So we’ve assembled the most expensive XI of players who’ve joined a Premier League club from abroad before only lasting a year in England and then heading away.

GK: Matteo Sereni or Massimo Taibi (£4.5m)

It’s slim pickings for the keepers – until Lucas Perri completes his proposed move away from Leeds.

For now it’s a tie between £4.5m Italians Matteo Sereni and Massimo Taibi, once of Ipswich Town and Manchester United respectively.

RB: Alex Jimenez (£16.5m)

After joining Bournemouth on loan for the 2025-26 season, Jimenez triggered a permanent move in February.

But the Cherries suspended him amid an internal investigation. A couple of months later, they sent the former AC Milan wing-back back to Italy as Fiorentina took Jimenez on loan.

CB: Kalidou Koulibaly (£33m)

Koulibaly was linked with a Premier League move for years, but when Chelsea finally made it happen, it didn’t last long.

He’d been one of Serie A’s standout defenders during his time with Napoli but forgot to bring that form with him to the Premier League.

Aged 31 at the time and evidently past his prime, Koulibaly played 32 times for Chelsea in the 2022-23 season before they took a hit when selling him to Al Hilal.

CB: Dean Huijsen (£12.8m)

While most of the names in this line-up left after one season because they were flops, the same wasn’t true of Huijsen.

Instead, he only lasted a year at Bournemouth because he turned out to be too good for them to keep.

Real Madrid came calling soon after his move from Juventus. Bournemouth could do nothing about it due to his £50m release clause.

It gave them a tidy profit and the honour of being a part of Huijsen’s journey.

LB: Filipe Luis (£15.8m)

There’s going to be a lot more Chelsea here.

At left-back it’s Filipe Luis, who joined from Atletico Madrid in 2014 before retracing his steps a year later.

The Brazilian was beaten to regular gametime at left-back by right-back Cesar Azpilicueta, so headed back for a second four-year spell in the Spanish capital by the end of the season.

He did get to go out as a Premier League winner, to be fair.

CM: Tijjani Reijnders (£46.5m)

It has all unravelled pretty fast for Reijnders at City. He started well after his move from AC Milan, getting a goal and assist on his Premier League debut.

But Reijnders’ form nosedived as the season went on and now he’s packing his bags for a move to Al-Qadsiah in Saudi Arabia.

He was Serie A’s reigning midfielder of the year when he joined City. It’s been quite the comedown.

CM: Tiemoue Bakayoko (£40m)

More Chelsea for you, as promised.

Bakayoko became the Blues’ second most expensive signing up to that point when he joined from Monaco in 2017. But it turned out to be a disaster.

His playing time was healthy enough, with 43 appearances across the 2017-18 season. It was what he was doing – or not doing – in those appearances that cost him his Chelsea future.

A year on from his arrival, Bakayoko began a series of loan moves away from Chelsea. The next five years of his career, until he was finally released, were all spent out on loan, at either AC Milan, Monaco or Napoli.

RW: Moussa Diaby (£51.9m)

Diaby arrived at Aston Villa as their record signing in 2023 and scored six goals from 38 games in his only Premier League season.

He then moved on for a marginal profit by joining Al-Ittihad in 2024, which seemed a shame at the age of 25.

AM: Joao Felix (£42m)

And another one from Chelsea.

A transfer so bizarre that the player in question only lasted half a season, making his 10 colleagues in this XI look like long-serving veterans.

Chelsea had brought Felix to the Premier League before on loan, but didn’t show any intention of buying him after.

But a year later, after he’d spent the 2023-24 season with Barcelona, they signed the attacking midfielder permanently in a part-exchange deal with Conor Gallagher.

Felix didn’t fit into their plans and left on loan for AC Milan that February, before a permanent sale to Al-Nassr in the summer of 2025.

LW: Angel Di Maria (£59.7m)

Quite possibly the most high-profile case of a player coming to the Premier League and lasting only a year.

Di Maria was one of the best forwards of his generation, but Manchester United never quite got to see the best of him.

After his 2014 move from Real Madrid in a British record deal, Di Maria was used in a variety of roles but never really found his groove in any of them.

With just three Premier League goals to his name, he moved on to PSG in 2015, where he’d score more than 50 Ligue 1 goals across seven seasons, becoming the real Di Maria again.

CF: Romelu Lukaku (£97.5m)

Yep, Chelsea again.

There’s a caveat to this one in that Lukaku had played in the Premier League before the move in question, but since it was from a club abroad and he never played in England again after, he fits the criteria.

Chelsea had the wise idea of bringing Lukaku back from Inter in 2021 after his encouraging 47 goals across two Serie A seasons.

It didn’t matter to the Blues that he’d failed to score for them in his previous spell at the club, or that he’d fallen below expectations in his last Premier League stint with Man Utd.

And so, they broke their transfer record on Lukaku. A grand total of eight Premier League goals followed.

By the end of the season, the big Belgian striker was heading back to Inter on loan. His next loan kept him in Italy thanks to Roma, before he settled (relatively speaking, for him) at Napoli.