Viktor Gyokeres scored 43 goals for Sporting last season and is on course for another big haul this season after 23 in his first 17 games.

That includes a hat-trick against arguably the best team in Europe. in his penultimate game under a manager who could join Manchester United at the end of the season.

Yeah the top scorer in 2024 Follow Rubén Amorim to Old Trafford or nothe seems destined for bigger and better things, which often means the Premier League. But fair warning to Gyokeres and his suitors: scoring a host of goals in the season before moving to the English top flight is far from a guarantee of success once you get there.

These ten players scored more than 30 goals in the campaign before moving to the Premier League and failing.

Timo Werner (RB Leipzig to Chelsea)
One of five players signed by Frank Lampard in the summer of 2020, leading one overly optimistic Chelsea-supporting journalist to claim the Blues legend had a “foolproof team” to work with and must mount a challenge. in the Premier League.

Thiago Silva was an excellent buy and Ben Chilwell has had his moments, but none of Hakim Ziyech, Kai Havertz or Timo Werner proved to be as successful as we thought they would be at Stamford Bridge, with Werner in particular a source of great frustration. .

It hasn’t really worked since then, with Tottenham fans now regret he is the man at the end of the chance, preparing for inevitable missed shots in good positions or terrible decisions by a striker for whom finding the back of the net came naturally before arriving in the Premier League.

Romelu Lukaku (Inter Milan to Chelsea)
Following Champions League glory under a manager who knew what he was doing, Lukaku was considered the final piece of the puzzle for Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea.

Four seasons after the departure of Diego Costa, after tinkering with Álvaro Morata, Gonzalo Higuaín, Tammy Abraham, Havertz and Werner, Chelsea signed A Central Forward of Their Own; a bully, essentially.

Lukaka scored in his first game on his return to Chelsea against Arsenal when we all thought the Blues were on to something, but before that he scored just three more. his explosive interview with Sky Italia in December which pointed to Tuchel’s tactics, and that was it.

Eduardo (Dinamo Zagreb to Arsenal)
Not so much Eduardo who failed but his left foot. Sometimes we can still see him hanging limply from the rest of his leg, joined by simple tendons, when we close our eyes at night.

He suffered possibly the worst injury in Premier League history when Birmingham’s Martin Taylor broke his tibia and fibula and who knows how his career would have progressed without that harrowing moment.

Darwin Núñez (Benfica-Liverpool)
Depends on your definition of failure, etc., etc., but after a goal off the bench in his first appearance for Liverpool in the Community Shield win over Manchester City, after which more than a few Liverpool fans Liverpool suggested they could have signed their own Erling Haaland. Perhaps even in a more complete version, we can safely say that Núñez did not live up to expectations at Anfield.

READ MORE: There is a clear winner in the chaos clash between Nicolas Jackson and Darwin Núñez

Djibril Cisse (Auxerre-Liverpool)
Cisse faced an uphill battle from the moment he walked through the door on Merseyside with the manager who was so desperate to sign him, Gerard Houllier, already sacked in favor of Rafa Benitez, who it is fair to say didn’t like him as much. the french.

“I have fantastic memories of England, although I still have a grudge against the coach,” said Cisse. L’Equipe Magazine. “I haven’t swallowed it yet. I may never swallow it. I’m still very upset. I scored 19 goals and never played! The coach and I were not compatible.”

Roberto Soldado (Valencia-Tottenham)
“He is a footballer valued at £26 million, our record signing, don’t you think it will affect him? “I don’t care, Harry is starting.” A story that Tim Sherwood will tell anyone who passes him on the street as he takes credit for Harry Kane, who wouldn’t be England’s greatest goalscorer if his genius coach hadn’t included him in the team that beat Soldado, who scored six goals, in April 2014.

Nine One-Season Wonder seasons at Tottenham followed for Kane, as Soldado presumably regrets moving to a club that was in the process of preparing a goal machine.

Vincent Janssen (from AZ Alkmaar to Tottenham)
We would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in what we assume were talks between Daniel Levy and Janssen riddled with confusion, with neither party anywhere close to being convinced that a move to Spurs was a good move.

Kane had just scored 25 Premier League goals having managed 21 the previous season and yet, with uncertainty over scoring longevity all but eliminated, Spurs decided to spend £20m on a striker for the bench and Janssen had too much faith in his own ability o He was perfectly happy to watch from the sidelines. He started seven Premier League games.

READ MORE: A step-by-step guide to proving that Harry Kane hasn’t actually scored exactly zero goals for England

Álvaro Negredo (Sevilla-Manchester City)
Signed the same summer as Stevan Jovetic in that pre-Pep Guardiola period, when Manchester City were wasting money on problems they didn’t really have, with Sergio Aguero and Edin Dzeko doing perfectly well without supposed extra firepower that they failed to do. a mark at the Etihad.

Mateja Kezman (PSV Eindhoven to Chelsea)
Batman to (Arjen) Robben and they joined Chelsea together from PSV Eindhoven, and many were more excited about Kezman’s arrival than his teammate after not one, but two 30+ goal seasons for the Dutch team.

Their careers took quite different trajectories: Robben earned a move to Real Madrid thanks to his performances at Chelsea and then to Bayern Munich, where he won 14 major trophies. Meanwhile, Kezman scored fewer goals in the nine seasons after leaving PSV than in the two standout campaigns that brought him to Chelsea.

Memphis Depay (from PSV to Manchester United)
Okay, he only scored 28 goals for PSV, but we’ll be damned if we make a list of nine. He has been linked with a comeback on more than one occasion. Having recorded excellent numbers with Lyon and then also impressed at Barcelona, ​​but two goals and no assists in 1,427 Premier League minutes for Manchester United is a really bad record.