Barcola next? The most expensive new signings with zero Premier League G/A
Bradley Barcola can score all the Champions League hat-tricks he wants, but will remain the new Stewart Downing until he does it in England. The Liverpool forward has arrived in Europe but is yet to score or assist in the Premier League, joining Mateus Fernandes (£85m), Ayyoub Bouaddi (£81m), Savio (£75m), Carlos Baleba (£65m) and Iliman Ndiaye (£65m) as the most expensive summer signings awaiting their first goal contribution of the season.
They would all shatter what we believe to be the Premier League record for the most expensive summer signing not to score or assist in the season they moved clubs. Romeo Lavia (Chelsea, 2023/24) - £58m In his defence, his first Premier League season with Chelsea consisted of 32 minutes between separate lay-offs with ankle and knee problems.
But Lavia neither scored nor assisted in that half-hour so our hands are tied. That's what you get forturning Liverpool down and joining Chelsea because of "history".
Kalvin Phillips (Manchester City, 2022/23) - £45m In more than 200 appearances across eight years in the Leeds first team, Phillips only scored 14 goals and claimed 13 assists. That was not what attracted Manchester City, but in a free-flowing side with better players and coaching, one might anticipate at least an arse-adjacent deflection.
Not so for Phillips, whose only goal of his Manchester City career - technically still so far - came in the Champions League group stage against Red Star. Tyler Dibling (Everton, 2025/26) - £40m While once a £100m price tag andthe admiration of Jason Wilcox might have been a sort of accolade, Dibling was damned by those high expectations and valuations at Southampton.
Everton took the plunge after the winger went down with Saints, but David Moyes has had Dibling on a diet of restricted minutes and tough love since. He remains without a Premier League goal or assist in 378 Premier League minutes for the Toffees.
Igor Thiago (Brentford, 2024/25) - £30m A really quite severe knee knack will do that to you. Thiago picked up a meniscus injury in the pre-season he joined, then returned in November only to be sidelined again with an infection in the joint.
The Brazilian came back for the final four games of the season, doubling his Premier League appearance tally, but only one of those were starts and he understandably struggled to make an impact -until the following season. Ibrahim Sangare (Nottingham Forest, 2023/24) - £30m Having scored a goal of goals in Champions League qualifiers for PSV in the August before signing for Forest a month later, Sangare might have expected to chip in a little more for the Tricky Trees.
It took him until January 2025 to notch a Premier League assist, and another eight months passed before he scored his first goal. Evann Guessand (Aston Villa, 2025/26) - £26m It is possible to feel sympathetic to Villa's PSR plight and SCR soreness, while also pointing out they have also had an awful lot of transfer waste.