Roman Pavlyuchenko joined Spurs for £13.7 million in 2008 off the back of a highly impressive Euro 2008 with Russia in which he was named in the 23-man Team of the Tournament. He joined the White Hart Lane outfit from Spartak Moscow in his homeland a club where he had an impressive goalscoring record of 69 league goals in 121 league starts and he was attracting the attention of a number of big clubs around Europe at the time. Calling him a flop could be viewed as quite harsh, as he was severely underutilised at White Hart Lane, often finding himself fourth in the pecking order up front, with Jermain Defoe, Robbie Keane and Peter Crouch all ahead of him, and he did score more often than not when he played - but he just didn't have enough time on the pitch to pay back his fee. He only made 45 league starts in three and a half years at the club, scoring an impressive 21 times in those matches, by which time he was 30 years old and took the step back down to Russian football with Lokomotiv Moscow where he remains to this day.
