The £12m Middlesbrough signing that was too good to be true: View | OneFootball

Highlights

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Whether they have been in the Premier League or the Championship, Middlesbrough have spent some significant figures on players over the years.

Second tier purchases such as Jordan Rhodes, Britt Assombalonga and George Saville have not been very successful for Boro, but some of their big buys in the top flight had some good times, including Fabrizio Ravanelli and Yakubu.

In January 2008 though, Boro smashed their transfer record as they were in desperate need of a fresh supply of goals, and they turned to the Eredivisie where Afonso Alves was firing in the goals for Heerenveen.

Alves had signed from Malmo of Sweden in 2006, having scored 29 league goals in 55 appearances for them, and he continued his fantastic form in Holland.

Scoring a ridiculous 34 goals in 31 Eredivisie appearances in his debut year with the Frisian outfit, Alves had netted 11 times in eight outings in 2007-08, and then Boro then paid £12.7 million for his services at the age of 26, in the hope that he was to be the man to solve all of their problems.

A full Brazil international due to his form in the Netherlands, the hype around Alves was severe, but there had been strikers who had come over from Holland and not made an impact - namely Mateja Kezman who signed for Chelsea in 2004 and failed to hit the heights.

Alves was not immediately thrust into action by Gareth Southgate, and in his first half-season at the Riverside Stadium he started just three out of his 11 league appearances for the Teesside club.

In his sixth Premier League outing, Alves finally broke his duck with a brace against Man United in a 2-2 draw, and in a simply memorable 8-1 final day of the season win over Man City, just a few months before their Abu Dhabi takeover, the Brazilian marksman netted a hat-trick.

The signs were all there that Alves was going to fully acclimatize in his first full season at Boro in 2008-09, having finished with a record of six goals and one assist in 11 Premier League games played - that however did not end up happening.

In fairness, Alves started the 2008-09 campaign with three goal contributions in his first four matches, but he could not gain any consistency whatsoever, and by December he was dropped out of the starting 11 by Southgate.

And in the second half of the Premier League campaign, Alves started just six times and ended the season not only with a fractured metatarsel, but also with only four goals in 31 appearances.

It was a season where Boro were relegated to the Championship, and after disappointing overall, there wasn't a real chance that Alves was going to stick around for the second tier of English football.

What did Afonso Alves do post-Middlesbrough?

Middlesbrough got some of their hard-earned money back for Alves, selling him to Qatari outfit Al-Sadd for £6 million after the English transfer window had closed in September 2009.

His time there did not last long though, as after just a few months, he was loaned to fellow Qatar Stars League outfit Al-Rayyan, where he had more success in-front of goal with 27 goals in 34 league outings.

Alves had one final stint with a Qatar-based club in the form of Al-Gharafa in 2012, but after just four appearances, he departed the club a year later and did not get another team for two years, in which he subsequently announced his retirement from the game at the age of 34.

There was much promise and excitement surrounding Alves when he came to England, but there's no doubting that he failed to live up to the billing and the transfer fee - at least Boro got some of their money back but it was still a big fee that was essentially not worth it in the end, in hindsight.