Manchester United have suffered two of the greatest market value decreases of Premier League players this year, but one team owns four of the top 10.
These are the greatest decreases in market value since January 1 of players contracted to Premier League clubs, with figures taken from Transfermarkt.
10) Joel Ndala (Manchester City)
It could still be that Ndala is soon entered into the Manchester City cheat code as the 19-year-old is yet to make his debut for the club he joined aged 10.
But if this past season was designed to mark his professional breakthrough after forming part of the travelling Etihad squad for the 2023 Club World Cup and winning the 2024 FA Youth Cup final, the plan went awry somewhere along the line.
A loan to PSV with an £8.4m option to buy went so well that Manchester City cancelled it in February to send Ndala to Nottingham Forest with the same clause, only this time worth £4m.
That rather neatly captures the fall in value suffered by the forward, who will be stuck this summer until Manchester City get around to sorting new temporary homes for those players who have fallen through the cracks between the Academy and the first team.
9) Deivid Washington (Chelsea)
“Leaving was God’s plan. I wanted to stay at Santos, but I spoke to my parents and had the chance to go to Chelsea. We chose together. God spoke to me and we went to Chelsea,” said Washington in a risible endorsement of the divine one’s work as an agent earlier this year.
The Brazilian forward is right to put his own personal slant and transparently brave face on things but if “God’s plan” as a footballer ever involves being signed for £14m, making three substitute appearances of a combined 25 minutes and being sent back to your former club within 18 months with five years remaining on your contract with the team which has clearly forgotten about your existence and bought a handful more younger players in your position, then God has messed up.
“It was not a mistake,” Washington continued to insist as he slowly shrank and transformed into a corn cob, having scored one goal in 14 games back at Santos. “I left when I had to leave and came back when I had to come back,” he added, summing up the life of a Chelsea player destined to be loaned out about seven more times before his deal expires.
8) Adrian Mazilu (Brighton)
Brighton are far from above speculating to accumulate. The key difference which separates them from most in the transfer market is how phenomenal they are at it.
But there are no cast-iron guarantees in player identification and recruitment; Brighton’s impressive hit-rate only means the chances of them developing the next Moises Caicedo or Alexis Mac Allister rather than Valentin Barco or Abdallah Sima’s successor is akin to a coin flip.
Mazilu has fallen by that wayside hard. An exciting January 2024 signing made in advance, the Romanian forward was sent on an immediate loan to Vitesse as Brighton turned the tables and copied Chelsea’s homework.
With opportunities difficult to come by in the Eredivisie, it was instead decided that Mazilu would spend this past season under the watchful eye of the Seagulls, who perhaps did not expect for him to suffer a foreboding hamstring injury and myriad recovery setbacks which have sidelined him until this summer.
When Mazilu is introduced back into the fold, it won’t be as part of the first team. But it will be with three years left on his contract.
7) Kendry Paez (Chelsea)
Nothing sums BlueCo Chelsea up quite like two of Mauricio Pochettino’s first ‘signings’ as manager: a player bought during the reign of his predecessor; and a player whose pre-arranged purchase means he will make his debut for the club under the Argentinean’s successor.
Paez might consider his £17.27m move from Independiente del Valle to be a triumph if he makes it as far as actually playing for Enzo Maresca, who confirmed that the teenager had belatedly joined them on Club World Cup duty in the United States this summer after some confusion.
But with that came a familiar harbinger of bomb squad ruin. “We’ll see what the plan is in the next few weeks,” said the head coach, who will presumably spend that time perfecting his phrasing of ‘You ever heard of Strasbourg, fella?’.
6) Facundo Buonanotte (Brighton)
Even with some eye-catching performances on loan, that filthy Leicester brush was bound to tar Buonanotte.
Brighton had stockpiled more than enough talent to afford to send some down the Premier League food chain last season. Ipswich borrowed Julio Enciso, West Ham were loaned Evan Ferguson, Buonanotte was posted to Leicester and Southampton were left wondering what they’d done wrong.
Buonanotte impressed in bursts as one of the bigger fish in a small and cursed pond, but also incited the fury of Ruud van Nistelrooy after one particularly wasteful substitute appearance and only featured infrequently thereafter.
5) Alejandro Garnacho (Manchester United)
It feels like Manchester United would take that £40m if offered again. It doesn’t bear thinking about how many people Sir Jim Ratcliffe would be willing to make redundant for Napoli to pick up the phone and start things where they left off in January.
“You better pray that you can find a club to sign you,” Ruben Amorim told Garnacho in front of his Manchester United teammates at the end of the season, yet a willing buyer was right there in the winter to answer that invocation.
The way Garnacho and his team have systematically decimated his value in a matter of months is almost impressive. A 20-year-old Argentina international forward who trailed just Bruno Fernandes, Noussair Mazraoui and Diogo Dalot for outfield minutes at Manchester United last season – and only Fernandes for goals – sounds entirely worthy of that £60m valuation.
But it is preposterous considering his ostracisation under this manager is painfully public knowledge, Garnacho’s reaction to which has involved taking some increasingly childish measures specifically designed to court controversy.
4) Kobbie Mainoo (Manchester United)
There will be no rival shirts worn with the name of a similarly exiled teammate pointedly emblazoned on the back, no habitual middle finger deployment at the sign of a camera, no agent-based buffoonery.
But the fall of Mainoo from teenage midfield sensation to an injury-prone potential sale with no fixed position needs to be studied and proves how deep the toxicity at Old Trafford runs.
Amorim is yet to establish where he feels Mainoo best fits into his system. The England international has been trialled in more defensive roles and as a centre-forward but it is yet to click for player or manager.
The idea Manchester United could still generate £150m from offloading both Mainoo and Garnacho feels absurd but a decision must be made as to whether they rehabilitate the former themselves or let someone else pay a knockdown fee for the honour.
3) Ibrahim Osman (Brighton)
“When you perform at Brighton, you get to play. That’s why I chose Brighton,” said Osman recently, having had neither the chance to perform nor play on the coast.
Brighton announced Osman’s signing from Nordsjaelland in February 2024 and sent him on loan to Feyenoord by that August in the hope it would provide some extra seasoning, including Champions League experience.
The Ghanaian forward received precisely that, even starting and impressing against runners-up Inter in the knockouts.
The expectation from Brighton might have been for Osman to start more than six Eredivisie games before returning but three goals and assists apiece for the country’s third-best team suggested there is a player for Fabian Hurzeler to work with if he so wishes.
2) Luis Guilherme (West Ham)
As a £25.5m signing from Palmeiras, Luis Guilherme might have foreseen an easier path to the West Ham first team.
A Brazilian teenager living and playing outside of his home country for the first time, the winger would have accepted a period of acclimatisation was necessary.
But his 13 appearances for the Hammers last season were spread out across 139 underwhelming minutes under two different managers, neither of whom seemed to know what to do with former Liverpool target Guilherme. It doesn’t feel like Graham Potter will have learned over the course of the summer.
1) Evan Ferguson (Brighton)
The West Ham curse is real, although again it is ultimately Brighton whose model has harmed some players as much as it has helped others.
An ankle ligament injury requiring surgery did the most damage to Ferguson’s stratospheric ascent through the ranks and onto that most inevitable of places for a thriving teenage goalscorer: the transfer shortlists of Chelsea and Manchester United.
But managerial changes and the club’s general shift away from a style of play which more suited Ferguson has seen him crash to maybe fifth in the centre-forward pecking order.
Brighton felt they had a £100m asset and for a time they probably did, but one goal in his last 44 games across all competitions has seen Ferguson’s stock fall as hard as it rose.
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