Name your club's best bargain basement signings

redman5

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You'd be hard pushed to find a better modern day bargain than Andy Robertson for £8m from Hull. Even most of us Liverpool fans were confused by that signing as we wanted an upgrade on Moreno and I certainly didn't think that Robertson was it.
Sami Hyypia is another one we can put on the list. We only paid £2.6m for him just a few years prior to United paying £30m for Rio. 10 years great service & the PL was the only major trophy he never won.
 

Grinner

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Nic Anelka wasn't bad. We got two good seasons and a bunch of cash out of the pillock. He later admitted that he never should have left Arsenal.

Think he cost 300 grand and went for summat like 26 million
 

awop

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Nic Anelka wasn't bad. We got two good seasons and a bunch of cash out of the pillock. He later admitted that he never should have left Arsenal.

Think he cost 300 grand and went for summat like 26 million
Kolo Toure was a nice bit of business too
 

redman5

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Nic Anelka wasn't bad. We got two good seasons and a bunch of cash out of the pillock. He later admitted that he never should have left Arsenal.

Think he cost 300 grand and went for summat like 26 million
Had a short spell on loan with us & was absolute class. The fans loved him. Houllier had the option to buy him but for reasons only known to him he declined the option. Must have been a French thing.
 

Jibbs

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You'd be hard pushed to find a better modern day bargain than Andy Robertson for £8m from Hull. Even most of us Liverpool fans were confused by that signing as we wanted an upgrade on Moreno and I certainly didn't think that Robertson was it.
True, Him and Xabi are probably two Liverpool players I absolutely love to watch.
 

Josep Dowling

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Park Ji Sung £4m
Van Der Sar £4m
Evra £5m
Vidic £7m

Pivotal part of many titles and cost nothing.
 

Andersonson

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Cantona. Brought a lot of fans to the club.

Alot of people born in 80's who are United fans because of him.
 

Hercules

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A Ballon D'Or winner for 12m, Ronaldo is the one for me. And we spent 30m around for Rio n Rooney, both great for us but the biggest bargain is Ronaldo.
 

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Bit of a tangent, but our 2007/08 squad was not that expensive really

VDS, Evra, Vidic, Park were all cheap, about £20 mil in total, if that?
Ronaldo £12mil
Tevez on loan (think it was £10 mil loan fee for the two seasons?)
Scholes, Giggs, Fletcher, O’Shea, Brown = no fee

The big purchases were Rio, Rooney, Carrick, Nani, Anderson and Hargreaves. Together they cost about £110 mil? So that would put the whole squad at somewhere around £150 mil, unless I’m forgetting some other signings.

Have we done a ‘bargain squads’ thread?
 

Gazza

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How much did Wenger pay for Vieira? £500k-1mil I think. Also Henry for £11mil, same price as Fulham paid for Steve Marlet
 

The Boy

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In recent times, it’s definitely Bobby Zamora for us. Cost £100,000 from Bristol Rovers spearheaded back to back promotions taking us from league 2 to the Championship. Then sold to Spurs for more than 10 times the price we paid.

EDIT: just googled his stats 83 goals in 136 appearances, that’s pretty good for a hundred grand striker!
 

ThinkTank@Cafe

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I think for many utd fans the most likely names would be Evra and Vidic.

Edit: na it's gotta be Ronaldo.
We paid a top dollar for him. £12 M for a unproven Portuguese teenager was not cheap at all at the time. Yes, he turned out to be one of the greatest but still not cheap. The club put a lot effort to raise him and make a 100 million super star. It took years

£5 and £7 for Vidic and Evra who became hits after half a season was a winter miracle. Pure bargain.
 

Shulz

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Juve had some amazing bargains at the start of the decade, that were the foundation for this period of national dominance.
Barzagli costed less than a million euros, Pirlo FA, around 10 millions for Vidal and of course Pogba.
 
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ZolaWasMagic

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Nic Anelka wasn't bad. We got two good seasons and a bunch of cash out of the pillock. He later admitted that he never should have left Arsenal.

Think he cost 300 grand and went for summat like 26 million
Top player, best spell of his career was with us. Excellent
 

Ooh2B

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I know Grinner mentioned Sol, and he was a steal at £o for sure. Indeed, that one is still paying dividends of sorts, but Dennis Bergkamp at £7.5 mil is my bargain of the century.

Gave us 11 years of wonderful memories and the premier leagues all time best goal.
 

FrankDrebin

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Romero is what I regard as a proper bargain basement signing. The type of signing that the majority of people are underwhelmed by and the type of guy that was struggling to gain much interest from anyone let alone interest from a major club like ours.
 

Ramos

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First ones that come to mind, remembering how important they became for their respective clubs:

Kante to Leicester at £5.6 m.

Kompany to city at £6 m

Cech to Chelsea at £7 m

RVP to Arsenal at £2.75 m

Hyypia to Liverpool at £2.6 m

Schmeichel to United at £500K

Internationally:

Del Piero to Juve
Nedved to Lazio
Lewandowski to Dortmund
Marcelo to Real
 

baskinginthesun

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Jamie Vardy to Leicester. 1.7M I think. Not sure if this is a bargain. But, to go from League 2 (or whatever) to Premier League and seemlessly become a lethal goalscorer in the top league probably qualifies.
 

harms

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First ones that come to mind, remembering how important they became for their respective clubs:

Kante to Leicester at £5.6 m.

Kompany to city at £6 m

Cech to Chelsea at £7 m

RVP to Arsenal at £2.75 m

Hyypia to Liverpool at £2.6 m

Schmeichel to United at £500K

Internationally:

Del Piero to Juve
Nedved to Lazio
Lewandowski to Dortmund
Marcelo to Real
Cech was arguably the biggest goalkeeping talent in the world that was sold for a club-record fee. The rest are great shouts.
 

Josh 76

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Schemeical
Evra
Vidic
Bruce
Irwin

Keane
Park

Kancelskis
Eric
Ronaldo

Chicaritio (the amount he cost at the time was a snip and scored some important goals).
 

Invictus

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Going with some older signings since most of the obvious ones from the post-modern era have already been mentioned. Can't comment on them being neat surprises at the time (or not), but ok...

• Paul McGrath: reported transfer fee of £30,000 from St. Patricks (the British record in 1982 was ~£1,500,000). At his peak, arguably the best player in the team after Robson. One of the best centerbacks in club history (maybe even the most talented of them all), made 200+ appearances, and so forth.
• Tony Dunne: reported transfer fee of £5,000 from Shelbourne (the British record in 1960 was ~£80,000). Trailed only Foulkes for total appearances by the end of his United career, could play on either flank, part of the club's first European Cup winning team, and in some respects the spiritual ancestor of Irwin.
• Steve Coppell: reported transfer fee of £60,000 from Tranmere (the British record in 1975 was ~£400,000). Outrageously talented but also a hard worker, integral part of a squad that reached 3 FA Cup finals in 4 years (including 1977 when Liverpool could have won the Treble), one of the best at his position in club history and made 370+ total appearances,

Couple of noteworthy bargain basement signings for other clubs:

• Johan Neeskens: RCH Heemstede to Ajax in 1970 for 102,000 in Euro equivalent.
• Gerd Müller: Nördlingen to Bayern Munich in 1964 for ~4,5000 DM — so 8 DM per goal, not bad!