Which player did your Premier League club let go too soon and why ...

The one that got away…

Did your Premier League club let an academy star leave before they could transform the first team? Or quickly move on a talented signing before seeing the best of them?

Whatever the case, while we are still deep in the summer transfer window, we asked our writers to look at which players were let go too early.

(We allowed one writer two picks, which seemed understandable in the circumstances…)

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Transfer news and TA500 ratings | Follow David Ornstein Premier League transfers: All the done deals Join The Athletic Insiders WhatsApp channel ArsenalSerge Gnabry

Emile Smith Rowe could be considered one this summer, although his limited game time means his move to Fulham makes sense. Alex Iwobi, now at Fulham, is another, as he was sold to facilitate the transfer of Nicolas Pepe in 2019. But again, the success of that move is open for debate.

Serge Gnabry, however, is a player whose career undoubtedly took off after leaving Arsenal.

He made his debut at 17 in 2012-13 and featured in nine Premier League matches the following year. A long-term knee injury in 2014-15 and an unsuccessful loan to West Brom in 2015-16 stalled his progress to the point that he needed a fresh start that summer.

At 21, he left for £5million ($6.3m) to Werder Bremen, and then Bayern Munich activated his €8m release clause in 2017. He has gone on to impress in over 200 Bayern appearances and 45 for the German national team.

This was not a case of Arsenal pushing a player out the door, as he was offered a new deal in 2016, but the ‘What could have been?’ question remains in the case of Gnabry and Arsenal.

Art de Roché

Aston VillaGary Cahill

When Villa were stumbling around the lower ends of the Premier League and being hammered 8-0 at Stamford Bridge, one of the players in that Chelsea team was Gary Cahill. He was a Champions League winner and soon to be England’s first-choice central defender. Just four years earlier, Villa had dispensed with their academy graduate, sending him to Bolton after two loans away at Burnley and Sheffield United.

Cahill was regarded as a competent defender at Championship level but failed to make the grade at Villa Park. His transformation was a testament to how he applied himself and his future clubs, Bolton and Chelsea, recognising his potential. Cahill would go on to win 61 England caps, win two Premier Leagues and as many Europa Leagues. They came mostly at a time when Villa were heading in the opposite trajectory, compounding matters.

Jacob Tanswell

BournemouthMorgan Rogers

How about Tyrone Mings and Nathan Ake as defensive options or what about Callum Wilson up top? As for Aaron Ramsdale, it would have been difficult to prevent his move to Arsenal, but given how his career there has panned out (being second choice behind David Raya), it will make fans wonder.

However, rather than a player they sold too soon, we’ve gone for one they let go despite the option to sign. Bournemouth fans might be scratching their heads wondering why they decided not to buy forward Morgan Rogers when he was on loan from Manchester City in 2021-22. They had an option to but never activated the clause.

Rogers, 22, completed a move to Aston Villa from Middlesbrough in February and if he reaches his full potential at Villa Park, frustration will surely be felt in Bournemouth.

Caoimhe O’Neill

BrentfordTyrick Mitchell

Tyrick Mitchell was 16 when Brentford shut down their academy to set up a B team in 2016. The project mainly focuses on the development of players between 18 and 21 who are more likely to have an immediate impact on the first team. Mitchell joined Crystal Palace’s academy.

By the time Brentford were fighting for automatic promotion in 2019-2020, Mitchell was already in the the Premier League with Palace and has made over 130 top-flight appearances since.

Brentford B has been a success and produced players who have made key contributions, but one negative outcome of closing the academy was losing a future star in Mitchell.

Jay Harris

BrightonViktor Gyokeres

Brighton do not often miss out on a healthy profit, but Viktor Gyokeres is one that got away.

They signed the Swedish striker for £900,000 from Brommapojkarna in September 2017, but he never made a league appearance in three and a half years at the club and was loaned out to St Pauli in the 2. Bundesliga, then to Championship clubs Swansea and Coventry.

Gyokeres made a permanent move to Coventry at the end of that season and Brighton are understood to have made a modest profit on the deal, which included a sell-on clause to protect their interests, but Gyokeres went to Sporting Lisbon two years later for around £20million.

He is rated now at £55million and could make a move to a Premier League club.

Andy Naylor

ChelseaKevin De Bruyne and Mohamed Salah

One of the eternal debates among Chelsea supporters is whether Kevin De Bruyne or Mohamed Salah is the generational superstar the club have missed most over the past 10 years.

Both were unquestionably inspired young signings sold far too soon for well below their peak transfer values as Jose Mourinho chased instant trophies in his second stint as Chelsea manager. The immediate result was a seasoned core that won two Premier League titles in three years, but the long-term cost was steep.

As if witnessing their fully realised brilliance was not bad enough, De Bruyne and Salah both became the driving forces behind the two clubs who have dominated English football at Chelsea’s expense since 2017.

Liam Twomey

Crystal PalaceGlenn Murray

It felt like a mistake losing Glenn Murray. The striker had endured serious injury issues, but when available he was a clever, instinctive finisher.

Three seasons after selling him for £4million to Bournemouth in 2015, he scored 13 league goals for Palace’s arch-rivals Brighton in the Premier League.

Another that got away? Alexander Sorloth. Palace took a punt on the raw Norwegian striker at 23, thrusting him into a struggling team, often out wide, out of position. Palace cut their losses after less than a year, loaning him out twice before selling to RB Leipzig.

He enjoyed the best season of his career for Villarreal in 2023-24, netting 23 in 34 La Liga matches and finishing above Robert Lewandowski, Jude Bellingham and Vinicius Junior in the Spanish top-tier goalscoring rankings.

Max Mathews

EvertonWayne Rooney

While the reported £27m fee Everton received from Manchester United in August 2024 was said to have gone a considerable way to keeping the club afloat, it is hard not to wonder what might have been had they been able to keep hold of a generational talent.

For supporters, losing a local lad who came through the ranks and supported the club hurt. Everton, at that stage battling relegation, missed out on his best years. And in selling to balance the books, they were unable to take advantage of a huge opportunity to improve their long-term fortunes on the pitch.

The trend has continued in more recent times, albeit on a lower level. Last summer, the club were forced to cash in on top prospect Ishe Samuels-Smith, who joined Chelsea for a fee of around £4m due to financial concerns.

Patrick Boyland

FulhamSteven Davis

Young players tend to be the ‘ones that get away’ at Fulham. Harvey Elliott left the club before he could drive a car, while Fabio Carvalho also saw the bright lights of Anfield and jumped ship perhaps prematurely. Matt O’Riley, now of interest to Europe’s bigger sides after a successful spell at Celtic, is another.

In terms of senior players, in 2007, Steven Davis was signed alongside three other Northern Ireland players following the appointment of Lawrie Sanchez. They had a slow start and Sanchez did not last long and was dismissed by December. But while Aaron Hughes and Chris Baird became fan favourites, Davis did not make a mark and like compatriot David Healy, he swiftly departed.

Davis went on loan to Rangers, where he signed permanently in 2008. Four years later, he was picked up by Southampton and became a Premier League regular.

Peter Rutzler

IpswichJordan Rhodes

The life of an Ipswich Town fan between 2009 and 2012 consisted of tuning into the Football League Show and having Manish Bhasin and Steve Claridge wax lyrical after academy product Jordan Rhodes scored again for Huddersfield Town. Meanwhile, a roll call of strikers in Suffolk struggled to hit double figures.

Rhodes had been generating excitement among Ipswich supporters, boasting a strong scoring record at youth level and during a brief Brentford loan.

In 2009, Ipswich invested handsomely ahead of Roy Keane’s debut campaign. Promotion was anticipated. Fellow young striker Connor Wickham was also breaking into the first team and 19-year-old Rhodes was allowed to depart for Huddersfield, initially for less than £500,000 but rising with add-ons.

Rhodes became one of the English Football League’s most prolific strikers. He scored 70 goals across three seasons in League One and earned an £8million move to Blackburn Rovers. Eighty-two Championship goals across three and a half years followed.

As for Ipswich’s 2009-10 promotion push? They didn’t win a league match until October 31 and Jon Walters’ eight goals was the most anyone could muster.

Ali Rampling

LeicesterKasper Schmeichel

After winning the Premier League in 2016, Leicester sold one star asset each summer to reinvest in the team. N’Golo Kante, Danny Drinkwater, Riyad Mahrez, Harry Maguire and Ben Chilwell were all moved on for hefty fees, but this policy changed in 2021, with the club investing heavily without any significant departures.

They brought in £75million from Wesley Fofana’s move to Chelsea, but a disastrous relegation and PSR breaches forced them to sell James Maddison and Harvey Barnes for reduced fees, while Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall departed for Stamford Bridge.

Among those eye-watering figures, the departure of club legend Kasper Schmeichel for just £1million to Nice in 2022 is perhaps the most startling. The Denmark goalkeeper made 414 appearances for Leicester, winning the Championship, Premier League, FA Cup and Community Shield while also captaining the club.

The 37-year-old struggled to settle in France and has recently moved to Celtic to rejoin Brendan Rodgers. Leicester have found a replacement in fellow Dane Mads Hermansen, but many supporters feel Schmeichel would still be the No 1 and could have prevented the club’s slide into the second tier.

Jordan Halford

LiverpoolXabi Alonso

The one that still hurts Liverpool supporters is Xabi Alonso.

When Rafa Benitez tried to sell the Spaniard to raise funds for Aston Villa’s Gareth Barry in 2008, Alonso became unsettled and left for Real Madrid a year later. By that point, though, the arrangement had backfired. So yes, a big mistake, but a long time ago now.

As for a more recent one, well, selling Dominic Solanke for £19million represented great business at the time and Liverpool were praised for the deal. In hindsight, perhaps a few more years monitoring the striker’s development might have been a better idea. Solanke has just joined Tottenham in a £65million deal. How Liverpool would have loved to know that he would become the striker he is today.

Gregg Evans

Manchester CityCole Palmer

There are a few caveats here with Cole Palmer.

For example, if he did not get opportunities in 2022-23, it was because they had Phil Foden, Bernardo Silva, Riyad Mahrez, Kevin De Bruyne and Ilkay Gundogan ahead of him, so for all his obvious quality, it is not like there were many opportunities for a younger player then. And having received a big offer from Chelsea, everything was tidied up pretty neatly last summer.

But with all that said, Palmer is the obvious name. It is not a given he would have become the same star had he stayed at City, but in an ideal world for the champions, he would have done his pre-season with them in 2023, waited a couple of months, got a chance and then blossomed.

Sam Lee

Manchester UnitedJaap Stam

“When I think of disappointments, obviously Jaap Stam was always a disappointment to me,” Sir Alex Ferguson told MUTV in 2013. “I made a bad decision there.”

Stam remains one of United’s greatest centre-backs. Tall, imposing, authoritative on the ball and menacing when going after it. Signed in 1998 from PSV Eindhoven, the Dutchman won three Premier League titles, a Champions League and an FA Cup at United before his 2001 autobiography Head to Head was thought to have contained a number of passages that led to a rift between him and his manager. Years later, Ferguson debunked the disagreement, instead pointing to an Achilles injury that affected his tackling numbers.

A 35-year-old Laurent Blanc proved a short-term stop-gap before Ferguson recruited Rio Ferdinand to be Stam’s eventual successor.

Carl Anka

NewcastleBobby Clark

It’s less a one-off and more of a list for Newcastle, dating back to Peter Beardsley, Chris Waddle, Paul Gascoigne and right up to Elliot Anderson and some painful clips of Yankuba Minteh this summer.

Yet at least those recent sales solved a problem. Not so the letting go of Bobby Clark in August 2021. Apparently, he wasn’t enjoying himself at Newcastle, which is no surprise because nobody was back then; the club was a joy-sucking machine.

A departure beckoned. Lots of big teams wanted him, Liverpool got him, aged 16, for a fee of up to £1.5million. He’s since been capped for England Under-20s, scored in the Europa League, and won the FA Cup – he’s already outperforming Newcastle in terms of silverware.

But the stats aren’t why it hurts. It hurts because weeks after he left, the club transformed from a talent suppressant into an Eddie Howe-led, massive-firepower-everywhere, behind-opposition-lines, big-six-scaring, Bruno-in-the-middle machine.

It felt like Bobby Clark should have been part of that, just like his dad, Lee Clark, was part of the Keegan project of the 1990s. Fans loved his dad, really loved him, and it felt like they would have loved Bobby, too, if they had a chance.

Andrew Hankinson

Nottingham ForestBrice Samba

A little more than two years after his departure, Forest are still trying to replace one of the heroes of their Championship play-off winning side of 2022.

Samba had his nose put out of joint by what was felt to be a low offer when it came to negotiations over a new deal and ended up returning to France to join Lens.

Dean Henderson, Keylor Navas, Wayne Hennessey, Matt Turner, Odi Vlachodimos and Matz Sels have all been drafted as potential replacements.

This summer, Forest have already added Carlos Miguel and are still targeting potential further additions, including Aaron Ramsdale and Sam Johnstone, as they look to fill the Samba void.

Samba, in the meantime, has established himself as a France international and was nominated for the Yashin Trophy at the Ballon d’Or awards in 2023.

Paul Taylor

SouthamptonJames Ward-Prowse

Once you start looking at the list of departures at St Mary’s it is easy to ask: what if Southampton had been able to hold on to Sadio Mane for more than one season? What would things have looked like if Dusan Tadic or Graziano Pelle stuck around? Would academy products Harrison Reed or Michael Obafemi have helped the cause? In most cases, either financial need or player ambition mitigates the loss.

But the emotional impact of losing James Ward-Prowse at the end of last season and seeing him wear West Ham colours will never sit right with Southampton fans. Any time before his retirement would have been too soon to lose him.

Hope remains that, now Southampton are back in the Premier League, there is a way of bringing their free-kick wizard, chief wind-up merchant and talismanic captain home.

Jacob Tanswell

TottenhamLuka Modric

By the time Tottenham sold Harry Kane or Gareth Bale, it was almost impossible for them to turn down the money on the table. For Kyle Walker and Dimitar Berbatov, they got very good deals, too. But if there is one sale that looks worse with the benefit of hindsight, it is selling Luka Modric to Real Madrid for £30million in 2012.

It was difficult for Spurs to say no — they had stopped him from going to Chelsea the previous summer and they were out of the Champions League for 2012-13 — but Modric still had four years left on the six-year deal he signed in 2010. And while everyone knew he was good after four years at Spurs, no one knew just how good he would become.

With every Champions League that Modric has won at Madrid (six so far), Modric has made it clear he is the greatest midfielder of his generation and one of the best of all time. That £30million fee now looks like a pittance for someone that good.

Jack Pitt-Brooke

West HamDavid James

You still see them sometimes: West Ham fans sitting in the corner of a pub, muttering to nobody in particular about what the team could have been, if not for the great dismantling of 2003 and 2004.

After relegation from the Premier League, the pain began with Glen Johnson, 18, sold for £6m to Chelsea. Joe Cole, 21, West Ham’s player of the year, also went to Chelsea, for £6.6m. Jermain Defoe, 21, stuck around in the Championship then got a £7m move to Tottenham in February 2004. Michael Carrick, 23, saw out the season, then also went to Spurs, for about £3.5m. All England internationals.

But that young talent was likely to leave eventually anyway and all brought in good money, so it could be argued they were good deals for West Ham. But what about England’s goalkeeper? David James was sold in January 2004 to Manchester City for just £2m. He was 33, so maybe people thought he was done, but after City, he joined Portsmouth in 2006, won the FA Cup, continued to be capped by England, and was the PFA’s goalkeeper of the year in 2008.

Manager Alan Pardew said the sale would fund new players “to increase our chances of promotion at the first attempt”. They signed Nigel Reo-Coker, Bobby Zamora and Adam Nowland and were not promoted at the first attempt.

Andrew Hankinson

WolvesVitinha

There were reasons Wolves did not sign Vitinha permanently following his loan spell at Molineux from Porto in 2020-21.

As outlined here, the Portugal midfielder struggled to find a role in Nuno Espirito Santo’s side, but with the 24-year-old having moved to Paris Saint-Germain for £34million and now established in the most talented Portugal team of all time, it is impossible to shake the feeling Wolves missed a trick by not taking up their option to buy him for £17million at the end of his loan and turning down another chance to buy him a few months later.

It is impossible to know how his career would have progressed with an extended spell at Molineux, but it is tough to see how Wolves would not have benefited.

Steve Madeley

(Top photos: Getty Images)