10 Most Controversial Transfers Of The Premier League Era

7. Ashley Cole To Chelsea

In 2005, then-Arsenal defender Ashley Cole was embroiled in a tapping-up scandal that rocked the Premier League and would ultimately end with his departure from the club. In January that year, Cole and his agent Jonathan Barnett were caught meeting with Blues boss José Mourinho and chief executive Peter Kenyon at a London hotel without the consent of the Gunners, and the defender was hammered with a £100,000 fine by the FA. Despite this, Cole signed a one-year extension with Arsenal, but would leave the following year under acrimonious circumstances after hitting out at his former club in his autobiography for "using him as a scapegoat" in the wake of the tapping-up scandal. After being deliberately left out of Arsenal's 2006€“07 team photograph, Cole was sold to Chelsea. The tapping-up incident wasn't the only controversial moment of his departure to the Blues. Arsenal had offered Cole a longer contract in a bid to keep him at the club, but the left-back was said to have been left "trembling with anger" when they offered him wages of "just" £55,000 per week, while Chelsea were offering £90,000. Fans have accused him of chasing pound signs ever since, and he was an easy target for hate among the Gunners' fan base until his departure from the club this summer.