10 Players Who Turned Down Big Moves To Join Newcastle

5. Demba Ba - West Ham

Though Demba Ba's offer from West Ham in the summer of 2011 wouldn't have meant that he physically moved clubs, had he stayed, he would have moved significantly up the pay scale. West Ham had been impressed with the Senegalese striker's impact in the final games of the season, despite the Hammers crashing out of the Premier League, and wanted to keep him around to lead their charge back out of the Championship. To try and convince him to stick around the club offered him a £500,000 bonus and £50,000 a week - a monumental offer for a Championship side, and especially for a player who Stoke had recently branded a catastrophic injury waiting to happen. But, despite later accusations that he's all about the cash, Ba walked away, invoking a release clause in his contract that allowed him to leave for free and joining Newcastle with Everton sniffing around. Learning precisely nothing from the clause that they benefited from to join the club, Newcastle then inserted a release clause in his deal, and then spent two years telling everyone it definitely still existed before Chelsea paid attention and nicked him.