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They should've taken the money.

6 times football clubs turned down eye-watering transfer bids – & came to regret it

Liverpool have reportedly turned down a mammoth £70million bid from Saudi Pro League side Al-Hilal for Darwin Nunez.

Anfield Watch claim that Liverpool are holding out for £85million as they look to recoup their original investment on the Uruguay international. It’s a bold move given that Nunez has struggled on Merseyside and isn’t currently making it into Arne Slot’s favoured XI.

Will Liverpool regret turning down that fee? We’ve identified six times clubs massively came to rue turning down wild bids.

Monaco – Thomas Lemar

Arsenal had an outrageous £92million bid for Lemar knocked back from Monaco on transfer deadline day in 2017.

“He decided to stay at Monaco,” Arsene Wenger told Telefoot. “Did we make a €100million offer? Yes. Are we going to make another offer? Yes.

“He is always ready to receive the ball, he is quite complete in both defence and attack.”

Monaco ended up accepting a slightly less eye-watering €70million bid from Atletico Madrid the following summer, but even that fee has not aged well.

Lemar remains with Atleti today, but rarely features for Diego Simeone’s side and has never scored more than four goals (in all competitions) in any of his seven seasons in the Spanish capital.

Maybe he would’ve fared better under Wenger at Arsenal, but given how Lemar’s career has panned out it’s not unreasonable to assume a £92million fee might well have made him the biggest flop in Premier League history.

Chelsea – Callum Hudson-Odoi

This season, Nottingham Forest’s Hudson-Odoi is showing that there was good reason for all that hype when he was first emerging at Chelsea – with an England debut before he’d even made a Premier League start for the Blues.

The winger had barely played any senior football when Chelsea rejected a bid of £35million from Bayern Munich. They later rebuffed an offer of a season-long loan with a £70million option to buy attached.

But that looked a mistake as Hudson-Odoi’s career stagnated, with a loan to Bayer Leverkusen in 2022-23 failing to inspire. In the end Chelsea sold him for just £3million to Forest, where he’s since proven himself an absolute bargain.

Barcelona – Frenkie De Jong

“We cannot improve sportingly if we do not do our homework economically,” Barcelona president Joan Laporta told the club’s general assembly in 2023.

“We have had the opportunity to sell Frenkie de Jong for €100million, and we did not want to do it so as not to lose our ability to be competitive.”

We’re not entirely convinced. Widespread reports at the time suggested that financially beleaguered Barca were desperate to cash in on the midfielder with Erik ten Hag particularly keen on reuniting at Old Trafford.

Any agreement between the clubs may have been moot, given it’s understood that De Jong himself was reluctant to trade the sun-baked climbs of Barcelona for the weary rain of Manchester.

We don’t know if De Jong would’ve gone on to make the Ten Hag project a success at Old Trafford, but we do know his career has stagnated somewhat at Barcelona. The Netherlands international has made just three starts this season under Hansi Flick.

Given their dire financial situation, Barca could surely have done with offloading his hefty wages while receiving a considerable transfer fee for a player who they’re now barely even using. Don’t be surprised if he leaves for nothing in 2026.


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Brighton – Evan Ferguson

Not only did Ten Hag miss out on De Jong, but Manchester United had a bid of £50million “laughed off” by Brighton in the summer of 2023 according to ESPN.

That summer they ended up landing on Rasmus Hojlund for £72million, and 18 months later the jury remains out on whether he’ll come good at Old Trafford.

The Danish striker has only scored 12 Premier League goals for the Red Devils, but that’s five more than Ferguson at Brighton over the same timeframe.

Senior figures at Brighton reportedly believed they had a £100million asset on their hands in Ferguson, and you could see the logic when the young Republic of Ireland international struck a ridiculously clinical hat-trick against Newcastle United in September 2023.

However, since then he’s struggled with injuries, went almost an entire year without scoring and now struggles for opportunities under Fabian Hurzeler. A loan to West Ham or Fulham have been mooted. Brighton would bite your hand off for £50million now, surely?

Diego Armando Maradona playing in a game against Germany. Argentina, January 1981.

READ: 14 jaw-dropping transfers we can’t believe nearly happened: Maradona to Sheff Utd…

Manchester United – Paul Pogba

The shoe is on the other foot for Manchester United this time – with multiple examples.

In August 2018, Fabrizio Romano reported in The Guardian that Barcelona offered Manchester United £45million plus Yerry Mina and Andre Gomes for the Frenchman.

The following summer, The Telegraph reported that Real Madrid tested United’s resolve with a £27.6million offer, with James Rodriguez thrown in for good measure.

All three of those makeweights ended up at Everton, but they did little in the north west for Manchester United to feel as though they missed out. Both fees offered can only be considered derisory, a fraction of what United paid to sign him from Juventus. Selling him in either of those windows would’ve likely been met by open revolt from the fans.

Pogba had his moments in his latter years at Old Trafford, and underlined his world-class credentials with a starring role in France’s 2018 World Cup win, but in hindsight United might have been better off cutting their losses earlier.

Pogba endured five trophyless seasons and an increasingly toxic relationship with the club and its coaches as he saw out his contract. A sideshow they could’ve done without.

PSG – Kylian Mbappe

PSG sporting director Leonardo confirmed that PSG had knocked back Real Madrid’s bid of £137million for their prized asset in the summer of 2021. The Bernabeu was always Mbappe’s destiny – the only question was ‘when?’.

Admittedly, even such a colossal fee would’ve been relatively meaningless for a club owned by a gulf state, but the Parisiens would have saved themselves a lot of grief, a protracted goodbye and an unseemly court case over unpaid wages.

Mbappe ended up extending his contract and scored over 120 goals across his final three seasons in Paris, firing them to the Ligue 1 title in each. But was that all worth £137million? Might PSG have been better balanced without him after bringing in Lionel Messi that year? Their underwhelming Champions League eliminations certainly suggest as much.

There was also an insane, world-record £259million bid from Al-Hilal in the summer of 2023, but that was always a non-starter. Mbappe never entertained the idea of going to the Saudi Pro League.