Footballers who came back stronger from bad spells

[Zoo]

Bergkamp perhaps. Highly rated and 23 so not too young before he went to Serie A. Inter beat a number of clubs to his signing.

 

[Krny]

Teemu Pukki. Wasn't good enough at football for the Scottish League. He was literally the Wendell Borton of footballers when he was at celtic. A Timid ,lazy , weak and technically inept shell of a footballer. He done well for himself after with less pressure to win every week.

Could use a lot of that (not all of it) for Amad diallos time when he was in Scotland. He was timid, weak, poor decision making , getting outpaced by greg taylor, he at least had a decent touch and could dribble (but usually into dead ends). Has thrived in the lower leagues though with less pressure. I Don't think he'll ever be UTD quality . Needs to be much better.

 

[Lay]

Raul had a tough spell in mid-00’s when it looked like he was finished – before reinventing himself and becoming a 20+ goals per season striker once again.

This is a good one. He looked done at Real Madrid and was only playing because of his name but he went to Schalke and was fantastic again

 

[abundance]

Bergkamp was out of sorts at Inter before Arsenal bought him.

Bergkamp perhaps. Highly rated and 23 so not too young before he went to Serie A. Inter beat a number of clubs to his signing.

As far as bad spells go, Bergkamp's one at Inter was pretty mild.

Stayed two years, and while he never impressed in the league, in the first season he won an UEFA Cup as top scorer with 8 in 11 games, which ain't that bad.

It was more of a case of not fitting in and not being particularly arsed at fixing that, rather than hitting a real low in performance.
He wanted to play in Serie A but once there he didn't really enjoyed the lifestyle, environment, media frenzy, the speculative nature of the game, and the old-school zona mista that Inter was playing at the time.

In the second season he just went through the motions while pushing for a way out.

The club also was pretty dysfunctional in those two seasons, going from 2nd place right before he came, to hovering near relegation zone due to a completely botched reinforcement transfer campaign that was meant to bridge the remaining gap to scudetto (while sacking the coach and winning the UEFA cup with a caretaker), and ending up with a change of ownership in the middle of the second year.

 

[Changeisgood]

Usually there is something that changes to give the player the opportunity to excel again, a change of manager, position/role, or even a teammate although often that is role related as well etc.. a recent one for us was Xhaka, became instantly a better player when Arteta slotted him in. Wasted a lot of time and money playing him elsewhere.

 

[DutchSerb]

Daley Blind and Dusan Tadic were vital cornerstones for Ten Hag's Ajax. Tadic was alright at Southampton but I think it was 3 times in a row he won best player of the league here in the Eredivisie.

Edit: it was 2

 

[P-Ro]

Petr Cech was one of the best goalies in the world from 2004 up until his head injury in 2006. For 3 seasons after that he was pretty shaky and error prone. Went back to being a top goalie from the start of the 2009-10 season and culminated in a string of legendary goalkeeping performances in our 2012 Champions League winning campaign.

 

[LASpurs]

Gareth Bale had a rough start at Spurs, remember there being multiple games where he played and Spurs didn't win. Rumours he was going to be flogged to Forest after a bad display in the League Cup v United at OT.

Not too long afterwards he was tearing PL defences a new one all over the country.

 

[pan pan]

According to Gary Neville, Torres.

He looked crap throughout his Chelsea stay but scored that goal at Barceloma that, according to Nevz, was worth the transfer fee on its own, despite Chelsea already going through when he scored it.

True. It wasn't decisive although it was a huge relieve of tension.

I would say that him winning that corner in the final from which Drogba scored is worth more.