Chelsea have had their fair share of big money flops over the previous 20 years as various managers have splashed out in the transfer market to no avail in order to chase glory, both domestically and in Europe.
Think back to players such as Fernando Torres, Andriy Shevchenko, Shaun Wright-Phillips and more recently, Alvaro Morata and Abdul-Rahman Baba, and it becomes clear that the club are quite good at wasting money.
Under Antonio Conte, the Blues won their fifth Premier League crown in 2016/2017 and that summer, the Italian chose to invest a significant amount into his playing squad with hopes of repeating that triumph.
Amongst his signings was that of Danny Drinkwater, the Leicester City midfielder, who joined for a fee of £35m as Conte looked to bolster his strength in depth.
The move turned out to be an absolute disaster for the Englishman and Chelsea, failing to replicate the heights that he had shown over the previous couple of seasons at Leicester.
How much did Danny Drinkwater cost Chelsea?
Drinkwater had spent five and half seasons at the Foxes prior to joining Chelsea, making over 200 appearances for the club, and he was integral to their sensational Premier League title triumph in 2015/2016, scoring three goals and grabbing eight assists.
They couldn’t reach those heights the season after and as the dying embers of the transfer market were drifting away in the summer of 2017, he moved to Chelsea, taking the next step in his career.
What should have been a chance for the player to make the step up and feature for one of the finest teams in the country turned out to be the wrong move.
The three-cap dud made just 12 league appearances under Conte and this was about as good as it would get for him in London, becoming a shadow of his former self.
Across the next three campaigns, he would make just one appearance and the player himself described his time at the club as a “shambles” and he ended up playing for Burnley, Aston Villa and Kasimpasa in a quick succession of loan spells without much success.
He finally departed Chelsea in 2021 upon the expiration of his contract and across his 104-week spell playing for the club (excluding his loan moves), Drinkwater rinsed the Stamford Bridge outfit for a staggering £46.6m, combining his transfer fee with the £11.5m earned in wages.
A colossal amount wasted on the “forgotten man” – as once described by author Mark Worrall – and the club will look to avoid such luxury mistakes in the future.