10 Failed Transfers That Would Have Changed English Football

Zlatan at Arsenal? Gazza at United? Cruyff at Leicester? They all could have happened.

By David Fox /

The exaggerated hoopla over transfer deadline might be a bit too much, but we get excited about it because of one simple truth: transfers are game-changers. A goal poacher, a box-to-box midfielder, a body-on-the-line defensive stopper, they can all alter the course of a season. They can turn nearly-men to title contenders, and make relegation certainties into escape artists. But sometimes it's not the transfers that actually happen that excite - it's the could-have-beens, the never-weres, the ones that got away that tantalise us the most. Some of the stories behind these almost-signings are eyebrow raising, but they're all true. In an alternate universe somewhere Gazza wore the red of United, Ibra was performing scissor kicks at Highbury and Kenny Dalglish was a Hammers legend. Imagine what English football would look like today if these amazing transfers had actually happened.