UNWANTED ARRIVALS! 11 transfers that managers didn't want – but the club signed them anyway

Transfers aren't always as straightforward as most of this summer window's moves have been. With less than a week left until the start of the new Premier League season, we've seen records broken and allegiances shifting left, right and centre.

Morgan Rogers became the most expensive British player in history when he completed his £117million switch to Chelsea last month, following in international team-mate Elliot Anderson's footsteps after he swapped Nottingham Forest for Manchester City in a deal worth £116m.

The window has been a relatively dramatic one with other stars like former Newcastle United trio Bruno Guimaraes, Sandro Tonali and Anthony Gordon all changing hands for sizable fees, and more moves are on the cards too as clubs reinforce ahead of the new campaign and the September 1 deadline day.

But with all those transfers, it's highly likely the club's managers either sanctioned the purchases or will at least be overjoyed to welcome new faces to their squads. This isn't always the case. Mirror Football takes a look back at instances where a transfer wasn't the manager's decision, but the club still went ahead with the deal.

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When Manchester United purchased Joshua Zirkzee from Italian side Bologna in 2024 for £36.5million, he became the first signing of the INEOS era at Old Trafford. Then-manager Erik ten Hag was given a new promising striker to work with. But the only issue? He'd requested a different type of forward.

Not long after Zirkzee's arrival, the under-pressure Ten Hag was relieved of his duties after a dismal start to the season and was replaced by Ruben Amorim. After his dismissal, reports broke suggesting that the Dutch boss was frustrated at the Zirkzee signing, as it was driven by INEOS, to whom he had requested a proven Premier League striker.

Zirkzee could do nothing to save Ten Hag's job and even under Amorim, he barely showed glimpses of the talent that shone in Italy. He could leave the club this summer, with Amorim supplanted by Michael Carrick. Zirkzee started just five games last term.

Tottenham defender Djed Spence was one of World Cup 2026's brightest lights and he made his mark in an England side that fell at the semi-final stage. But his path to becoming a Three Lions hero was not a straightforward one.

In 2022, Spence was snapped up by Spurs for £20m from Middlesbrough, having impressed the season prior on loan at Nottingham Forest. Antonio Conte was the manager at the time and he sensationally admitted that the full-back wasn't his signing, it was the club's.

"Spence is an investment of the club," said Conte. "The club wanted to do it. I said OK, this player is young but he showed he can become a good, important player for us. The club decided to buy him."

Under Conte, Spence played sparingly and in January 2023 he was sent out on loan to Rennes. In the summer, he joined Leeds United, but this loan was cut short. Genoa took him on for the second half of the 2023/24 campaign. These moves somehow paid off as the 2024/25 campaign was a breakout one and he played admirably last season before earning a World Cup call-up.

There was barely a United supporter alive who wasn't thrilled at the prospect of bringing Paul Pogba back from Juventus in 2016 — yet Jose Mourinho wasn't quite so enthused.

At least, that's according to Mourinho's close friend and former adviser Eladio Parames, who lifted the lid in 2018 on what went on behind the scenes as 'The Special One' looked to stamp his authority.

"Sometimes there are reasons beyond sports that lead the clubs, and not always the coaches, to gamble on hiring players," he told Record at the time. "Pogba, for example, is worth a lot in the advertising market, so much so that in just six months Manchester United had already recovered what they had invested in him [£89million].

"However, without terriers like Blaise Matuidi and N'Golo Kante at his side, he is worth ­virtually nothing on the field. United did not give Mourinho terriers despite advice given to Ed Woodward last summer."

Marseille's decision to bring in Celtic playmaker Olivier Ntcham proved such a bitter pill to swallow for Andre Villas-Boas that it ultimately cost him his job.

The former Chelsea and Tottenham manager not only walked away from his role at the Velodrome following Ntcham's loan arrival in February 2021, but sensationally quit management for good.

"I have resigned because I don't agree with the sporting policy of the club," Villas-Boas told reporters in 2021. "I said no to the signing of Olivier Ntcham. He wasn't on our list. I had nothing to do with this decision. Ntcham is a player I said no to. I was not aware [he had signed], I learned it in the press this morning when I woke up."

Newcastle fans would have been forgiven for considering Joelinton a waste of money following his £40m switch from Hoffenheim in 2019. Former Magpies owner Mike Ashley once disclosed that Rafa Benitez was among those unconvinced about sanctioning the transfer in the first place.

"He thought the £40m for Joelinton wasn't worth it. It's too much and the club shouldn't spend it," Ashley told the Daily Mail in 2019. "Very occasionally, I get to be me in this world. So here's the deal. I'll pay £20m of it personally. Nothing to do with the club. Above and beyond the budget.

"Rafa valued him at £20m. So that's what would come out of the club budget. The rest, £23m – I'll pay. And he still didn't sign it off. Looking back, I think he knew for a long time he was going to China because it was like we couldn't do anything. Joelinton was the test."

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Chelsea's haphazard approach to recruitment is still a topic of discussion. Yet, any contemporary chaos would struggle to rival the shambolic scenes witnessed at the turn of the millennium when an ageing Winston Bogarde rocked up from Barcelona.

Reports at the time suggested that then-manager Gianluca Vialli had been kept in the dark over the transfer, with director Colin Hutchinson having actually overseen the deal.

The late Vialli was dismissed by Chelsea shortly after Bogarde's arrival and he rounded off his four-year stint at Stamford Bridge as a notorious flop after Claudio Ranieri showed no interest whatsoever in the defender.

"You may have seen reports in the press that Vialli never wanted to sign me in the first place and it was my arrival that quickened his departure," said Bogarde following Vialli's exit. "As far as I am concerned, I was not aware of any of this."

A 29-year-old Andriy Shevchenko ought to have been music to the ears of virtually any manager, but then Mourinho was never your typical boss.

Having netted 173 goals in 296 appearances for AC Milan, Ukrainian legend Shevchenko was brought to west London by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, yet managed just 23 goals during a dismal two-season stint at Chelsea.

"He was like a prince in Milan and at Chelsea our philosophy was different, we had no princes," said Mourinho upon leaving the club in 2007. "Everybody needs to work like everybody else and everybody needs to prove he deserves to play. I think maybe he lost some self-confidence. Step by step a player goes in the wrong direction. He was not my first option."

For all the indications that Brendan Rodgers enjoyed ultimate authority over Liverpool's transfer activity during his Anfield tenure, Mario Balotelli is one acquisition he's sought to distance himself from.

Stepping into Luis Suarez's shoes in 2014 proved a daunting challenge, but the Reds eventually settled on former Man City striker Balotelli as their solution - though Rodgers hardly wanted his arrival.

"What we wanted and what we needed was a player who could really press at the top end of the field. It wasn't just a goalscorer we were after," the Northern Irishman subsequently admitted in 2016. "I felt Mario was someone who wouldn't work for us. But come the end of the summer, we were struggling to get someone who could do the role we wanted."

The late Kevin Keegan's second stint as Newcastle boss was not one to remember. Matters reached a breaking point following the 2008 summer transfer window, when the manager learnt that the Spaniard Xisco and the Uruguayan Ignacio Gonzalez were being imposed upon him.

Keegan wrote in his 2018 autobiography, My Life In Football: "It wasn't Mike's beer-guzzling that upset me that day. It was the fact that Tony Jimenez, the executive who had been put in charge of Newcastle's transfer business, had informed me we were spending £5.7m on a Spanish player called Xisco whom nobody from the club had ever seen play.

"On the same day the Xisco bombshell was dropped, I had also found out a Uruguayan by the name of Ignacio Gonzalez was joining us as a 'favour' for two South American agents.

"When I rang Dennis [Wise] to explain it was out of the question, he seemed determined to change my mind. Gonzalez, he said, was a 'great player,' and our contacts in South America meant we had the chance to get him on a season-long loan. He was adamant we should give him a go and suggested that if I clicked on YouTube I might find some footage to change my opinion."

Frank Lampard faced no shortage of obstacles during his first spell as Chelsea boss, not least the fact that he had little say over incoming transfers.

That power rested primarily with former director Marina Granovskaia and The Athletic reported that the fractured relationship between the pair played a significant role in Lampard's eventual departure from the club.

One such signing Lampard reportedly never requested - or at least not at that particular time - was RB Leipzig striker Timo Werner. Arriving in the summer of 2020, Lampard had previously lobbied for the Blues to bring in Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang that January, but was instead left with an alternative who failed to live up to expectations in west London.