Top 10 flops of the season: Liverpool, Newcastle shamed as Premier League clubs waste £680m | OneFootball

Liverpool and Newcastle United have been pants this season, and half of our top 10 worst signings of 2025/26 play for them.

The Premier League champions feature twice in our ranking, while a Magpies trio find themselves in the top four.

Tottenham Hotspur are the only other ‘Big Six’ club to contribute to this steaming pile of mediocrity.

If you’re interested in the best signings, have a read here.

10=) Nottingham Forest’s assortment of flops (£158.3m)

Edu Gaspar paid the price for a shocking summer transfer window when he lost his job in March. Forest thought his appointment was a major coup, but it turned out to be anything but, and he is a significant reason why they are now fighting relegation.

Forest splashed out just under £200m – only five teams spent more – and you could argue that there hasn’t been a single hit. The best is comfortably Igor Jesus, who has scored plenty in the Europa League but only three in 30 in the league.

With so many Forest signings disappointing, it felt necessary to lump them all together. The standout stinkers are James McAtee (£30m), Dan Ndoye (£34.6m), Omari Hutchinson (£37.5m), Arnaud Kalimuendo (£26m), Dilane Bakwa (£30.2m), Douglas Luiz (loan) and Oleksandr Zinchenko (loan).

9) Tyler Dibling (Everton, £35m)

Dibling is an incredibly exciting player and Everton know that, spending £35m to sign him from Southampton in the summer. But minutes have been very hard to come by.

This season, the 20-year-old has only started four times in the Premier League and played 88 out of a possible 180 minutes in the Carabao Cup.

We have no clue what’s going on, but it’s concerning.

8) Tolu Arokodare (Wolves, £23.4m)

They took a big punt on the even bigger man, obviously confident that he wouldn’t face the same fate as former target striker Sasa Kalajdzic. He hasn’t, in that he’s not crocked, but three goals in 27 top-flight appearances is rubbish.

7) Florian Wirtz (Liverpool, £100m)

Wirtz joined Liverpool in a £100million club-record deal last July and was the first sign that the champions were willing to go all out to win title after title, while the German was praised and deemed ambitious for rejecting Bayern Munich and the easiest of titles every single year for the more physical Premier League.

Wirtz has tried to adapt to a new country and league, so we have some level of sympathy, especially considering he’s only 22 years old. But when you cost a nine-figure sum, there’s little room for adaptation and every single touch will be heavily scrutinised. That’s just the nature of the beast, and for most of the campaign, the pressure has swallowed Wirtz up.

After registering 10 goals and 13 assists in the Bundesliga last season, Wirtz’s first goal involvement in the Premier League came after 16 games. There has been some wasteful finishing from the chances he’s created, but his expected assisted goals tally is only 4.47 across 27 matches. With only four goals and two assists in the league, he’s been nowhere near good enough. And plenty in the Mailbox saw it coming.

6) Xavi Simons (Tottenham Hotspur, £56.3m)

Spurs have been nothing short of a disgrace this season. After finishing 17th last season but winning the Europa League, they were expected to have a much better 2025/26.

Thomas Frank made some ambitious signings, namely Mohammed Kudus for £55m and Simons for £56.3m, yet Spurs are winless in 2026, fighting relegation, and on their third manager of the season after sacking Frank and Igor Tudor.

Simons was linked with PSG, Bayern, Arsenal and Chelsea before joining Spurs. It was a statement signing, yet his performances have been nowhere near the level we saw at Leipzig.

The Dutch international has as many goals as he does red cards in the Premier League and peaked when he assisted against West Ham on his debut. It has only gone downhill since then.

5) Harvey Elliott (Aston Villa, loan)

This was supposed to be the perfect transfer for Elliott, who was a bit-part player at Liverpool but clearly good enough to become the main man elsewhere. Yet, after three Premier League appearances under Unai Emery, the Spaniard decided he didn’t fancy the 23-year-old and, in order to stop Villa splashing out over £30m on him this summer, he has only appeared two more times in the top flight since Emery told everyone the club did not want to sign him permanently.

Elliott actually scored Villa’s first goal of the campaign in the Carabao Cup defeat to Brentford, but after a bright start, the Liverpool loanee’s season has become a nightmare and a disastrous waste of time at an important stage of his career.

4) Nick Woltemade (Newcastle United, £73m)

It’s impossible to defend Newcastle’s summer transfer window; it was nothing short of a calamity. They have three players in this ranking and Woltemade is their first to appear…in fourth place. Yup, not ideal.

Woltemade’s start to his Magpies career is probably what saves him from taking top spot. He did pretty well, scoring in four of his first five Premier League appearances. Since his brace at home to Chelsea in December, the big German has zero goals in the top flight and one across all competitions.

With Woltemade in a funk, Newcastle boss Eddie Howe moved him a little deeper, perhaps trying to find a pot of gold like he did with Joelinton, but it’s simply not worked.

Howe clearly has no idea what to do with Newcastle’s record signing and when Woltemade is in midfield, it’s like playing a man down. Under a different manager, the 24-year-old could become an elite striker, but his first season in England has been calamitous.

3) Anthony Elanga (Newcastle United, £55m)

Newcastle were desperate to sign a right winger in the summer and decided fairly early in the window that Elanga was their man. That was after it became clear they wouldn’t get Bryan Mbeumo, and a year after they didn’t come close to getting Michael Olise. Oh, what could have been.

Elanga, after two extremely productive years at Nottingham Forest, has registered zero goals and only one assist in 27 league appearances for the Magpies, and is looking more and more like a pace merchant with every passing week. His end product, as underlined by his poor numbers (or number), has been pretty abysmal.

A brace against Barcelona in the Champions League could have been a turning point, but Newcastle went on to lose that game 7-2, so, alas, it has not. His only other goal came against Manchester City in another second leg, this time in the Carabao Cup. Big game player?

2) Alexander Isak (Liverpool, £125m)

We move on to potentially the floppiest flop of all Premier League flops.

The most expensive player in Premier League history and one of two £100m+ Liverpool signings in a record-breaking summer window, Isak has missed a large chunk of the season after getting his leg snapped in half by Micky van de Ven while scoring against Spurs.

Perhaps we are blinded by his lengthy absence and have convinced ourselves that said goal would have been a turning point, because many people would have Isak first. In fact, we reckon most people would.

After the manner of his Newcastle exit, Isak wasn’t allowed a settling-in period, even after having no pre-season. The lack of a pre-season was a contributing factor to him looking off the pace, but that was his fault. You won’t find any sympathy here.

He became the first Liverpool player to lose his first four starts in the Premier League, and he’s their most expensive player ever.

1) Yoane Wissa (Newcastle United, £55m)

Despite having every reason to put Isak top, our man is Wissa, one of two men bought to replace the Swedish striker.

It was always going to be a risk considering Wissa turned 29 in September, and Brentford screwed the player and Newcastle over to a point, but the latter could have simply not bought him when his asking price doubled.

Instead, Newcastle panicked and backed themselves into a corner. Dragging the Isak saga out until the final day of the transfer window meant the Wissa deal was collateral damage.

Wissa has three goals in 22 appearances after missing the first four months of the season with a knee injury. That hasn’t helped and, while the injury was not his fault, it’s a contributing factor to his label as the worst signing of the season.

With Isak, there is a good chance he returns and does well, especially if Liverpool replace Arne Slot, but with Wissa, there is no resale value and, despite Newcastle crying out for a decent No.9, he is being consistently overlooked by Howe.

He didn’t play in the Champions League round of 16 against Barcelona, played 17 minutes in a dead-rubber play-off match at home to Qarabag (albeit after returning from a knock), and has been an unused substitute in three of Newcastle’s last six league games. He got injury time off the bench in one, the last 15 minutes in another, and was injured in the other game.

Newcastle absolutely chucked it last summer, and the Wissa deal is the worst of a catastrophic bunch.