- Apr 21, 2005
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Not sure you can call it lack of ambition as we spent similar sort of money on them and for many then Ndombele was the higher rated of the two at the time - there were concerns that Fernandes had already struggled once when leaving Portugal, that he was the older of the two players and that he might be too lightweight for the Prem. Poor scouting I'll grant you, but it's not like we took the cheap option. On the other thand, failing to get Dybala because of a £14m image rights bill was a lack of ambition.
It looks bad now but I still feel there's a player to be had in Ndombele so can't call it the worst transfer cock-up of all time just yet. Turning down Jol's requests for Martin Petrov, Elano and Sylvain Distin when we urgently needed good players in those positions and instead blowing the entire transfer budget on Darren Bent when we already had Berbatov, Keane and Defoe is the worst for me. Closely followed the following year by selling Berbatov and Keane to replace them with Pavyluchenko and Frazier Campbell. There have been rumours about us turning down Zidane and Bergkamp in the 90s which I'm not sure if I believe, but Redknapp has openly admitted he turned down Luis Suarez because he thought he wasn't an out-and-out striker and thought he'd get in Van Der Vaart's way.
Carrack for Zokora was painful too.
Paulinho was pretty useless as well.