10 Players Who Stole A Living From Newcastle United

5. Amdy Faye

Graeme Souness' nous in the transfer market was proved at Newcastle when he signed Jean-Alain Boumsong, Celestine Babayaro and Amdy Faye as his first three deals at the club. On paper, none were particularly bad - Babayaro was a Chelsea stalwart, Boumsong had a giant reputation in France (if not Scotland exactly) and Faye was highly thought of as Auxerre before he spent an injury hit time at Portsmouth. But then hindsight is a wonderful thing, and all three deals proved to be poor for Newcastle - including some pretty strong allegations of corruption attached to both the Boumsong and Faye deals. The fact that both players proved to be wildly over-valued and under-skilled suggested exactly why the deals were so under scrutiny, all agent naughtiness aside. Faye was billed as a "breaker" style football - like Cheick Tiote - not exactly the most skilled or technical player on the books, but willing and able to do the dirty work while other, better players brought the flair around him. Sadly, he was completely over-sold in that respect, and looked like Bambi on ice for most of his time in a black and white shirt, making 31 unjustified appearances in a terrible team before being sold on to Charlton.