From: Everton To: Arsenal Fee: 10 million (Source: The Telegraph) At Everton, Francis Jeffers, at the time a talented teenager of 16 years, was hitting the back of the net with great regularity and he quickly gained the reputation of being profilic in front of goal. With Jeffers being a young English talent, he caught the eye of a manifold of other Premier League clubs as a probable hot prospect for the future. So it came as no surprise, when Francis Jeffers moved to Highbury for a fee of around 10m in 2001. Many Arsenal fans were justifiably ecstatic about the arrival of a young English talent as he was probably the first English signing of the Wenger Era, but by no means did Jeffers live up to the "fox in the box" tag which many people labelled him. His Arsenal days were beleagured with injuries and poor performances, resulting in a mediocre to awful Arsenal record of just 22 games and 4 goals in the two years that he graced the club. Of course he did have the stiff opposition of Thierry Henry in his prime form and Dennis Bergkamp, whom rarely gave him a first team look in. In 2003, he was loaned back to Everton after a miserable time at Arsenal and he actually never played another game for the Gunners again. He will definitely go down as one of Arsene Wenger's worst ever signings and it just goes to show what happens when Wenger tries to invest in signing English players. Somewhat unthinkably, Jeffers has a goal for England... http://youtu.be/UOiCkg-SP7I
Massive Arsenal fan Jacob Savill, is a new-ish contributor to WhatCulture and his first few articles have proved popular amongst the sports and film pages. As an A-Level English Student and an aspiring journalist he's using WhatCulture as preparation for what he hopes to be a successful journalistic career.
