Whether it be in terms of whether they didn’t play as well as you expected them to be, or if they were injured/unfit all the time during their career at your club or perhaps got on bad terms quickly into their career at your club (e.g. Di Maria at Man Utd).
As a Liverpool fan, I can think of names like Aquilani, Robbie Keane, Morientes, Andy Carroll, Kewell, Litmanen, Nuri Sahin etc.
But the one that has to take the cake is Naby Keita. I was very excited when it was announced he would be joining us. He was like the 2nd best midfielder in the Bundesliga that season for Leipzig in the data and for a couple of seasons had shown a lot of great technical ability. He joins us and the rest is history. It’s not to say he didn’t have good moments with us when he had a run of games in the first team. But that was presicely the issue, getting a run of games. It was a constant cycle of spending over half his time injured and when returning, not always having his best games due to slowly returning to fitness and when he did start showing his sparkle he’d go off injured again for a while. I am not just gutted for us but gutted for him too in how it could’ve and should’ve turned out.
It’s sad how the times have changed opinions on Thiago for issues we were well aware of when we bought him. When he scored THAT screamer I thought he’d be the first name on the sheet for games to come. Was an unplayable force at times but it’s turned into a bit of a “Sturridge” for me. I hope we move him on in Jan so we can cling to the happy memories more because I reckon he’s one of the soundest fellas we have at the club. I really want to look back at him the same way I do for people like Mascherano, Alonso, Mo Sissoko and Arbeloa from that period