Ten player’s from England’s top flight who have had seasons to forget.
Darren Bent – Aston Villa
Despite joining in January 2011, this is actually Bent’s first full season for Villa.
A bright start last term ended abruptly as he was ruled our from February onwards with an ankle injury and this season was meant to be his rebirth into one of the best English goal scorers in the game.
However, it’s not quite panned out that way for the 29-year-old who risks becoming a forgotten man.
He quickly set about scoring the goals that kept them in the division and he repeated that feat last year until a trip to a bumpy Wigan pitch put him on the sidelines for five months and out of the running for Euro 2012.
However, this year, back to full fitness, he’s slipped behind Christian Benteke and Andreas Weimann in the Villa pecking order. The young duo have scored the goals that has kept the club out of the drop zone and proved more versatile at adapting their own game than Bent has.
Rumours of a fall out with Paul Lambert refuse to go away and he could very well find himself heading through the Villa Park exit for a cut price fee this summer after making just 25 appearances this season, scoring five goals.
Wojciech Szczesny – Arsenal
Although he’s only 22, and thus has time to develop, as a number 1 he’s just not ready yet.
A loan spell at Brentford in 2009/10 gave an insight into what a good player he can be, but upon his return to Arsenal he’s not lived up to the hype.
Earlier this season, his metal state had been questioned by his manager, suggesting that he’s not equipped to deal with the rigours of a Premier League season. With a new goalkeeper tipped to join in the summer, the Pole could seek a move away to put some distance between himself and his nightmare season.
Szczesny was relatively solid last season but he seems to have been the victim in the defensive problems that have undermined Arsenal’s current campaign. In his defence (no pun intended,) he’s not had much protection from those in front of him. The Arsenal defence has been shaky at times this term, but Szczesny has looked no more confident than they have.
Marko Marin – Chelsea
The Bundesliga is producing an exciting crop of young players at the moment, and Marin was considered as one of the best.
However, the 16-cap German international has seen his stock fall since joining Chelsea last summer.
The diminutive attacker has been limited to just six league appearances, but that could largely be down to the form of those around him, but a player of his pedigree should be able to force a few more games for himself even if it is his maiden season.
His Premier League career didn’t get off to the best start. Just four minutes into his debut, six months after joining the club, he launched into a horror challenge on QPR’s Stephane M’bia with his studs showing. He was lucky not to have been sent off and earned a lot of bad press for himself.
A loan move back to Germany could be likely, but there are still hopes that under the right guidance the 24-year-old will be able to salvage a his reputation in the Premier League.
Jack Rodwell – Manchester City
At Everton Rodwell appeared to have the world at his feet. Hailed as one of the new breed of English footballers that can transform a game with only a simple pass or turn in possession he has seen his career stall at City.
It was a given that at some point he’d take the step up to join one of the country’s elite clubs, but there’s a sense that he went to Manchester too soon, disrupting his natural progression and virtually ruling himself out of some valuable international experience with only a year to go before the World Cup in Brazil.
He has made just 11 appearances for City this year as they lost the title to neighbours United and though he missed three months of the season to injury, he’s not featured when fit either.
He’s in good company at City, though, who have a good core of English players. Particularly in the midfield. Gareth Barry and James Milner will be able to guide him, and Yaya Toure is probably the best role model you can have in your position.
But that won’t help him this year, and the gap in first team activity will surely hamper his progress.
Christopher Samba – QPR
The 29-year-old may have only joined QPR in January but he represents a lot of what has caused the club’s plight.
Arriving from Russian side Anzhi for £12.5 million, it soon became public knowledge that the Congolese international would be earning in excess of £100,000 a week in West London. Such wage packets are usually only reserved for those at the top of the table, not rock bottom.
Since making his debut for The Hoops they’ve won just twice, and kept only one clean sheet. One of the defeats came in an FA Cup tie against MK Dons. The League One side came off 4-2 victors that day.
Relegation is all but confirmed now, and this weekend could see it a reality if the club fail to pick up any points against Reading.
It comes as a slap in the face of the fans of the club to pay a man so much money to perform so badly. This isn’t the first time he has been aboard a sinking ship either.
He was a part of the Blackburn Rovers squad that disappeared from the top flight last season, though he was spared the blushes by Anzhi who pounced to take him to Russia in February.
It will be interesting to see who comes in for him over the summer with the wage packet that he’ll surely be demanding.
Robert Green – QPR
The 33-year-old’s career hasn’t being going to plan over the past few years.
A high profile blunder at the World Cup, relegation with West Ham and now he’s the second choice ‘keeper for a club he signed for less that 12 months ago.
And he’s about to suffer relegation again.
Signing for QPR on a free transfer last summer, he thought he’d be replacing the the outbound Paddy Kenny as Mark Hughes sought to overhaul the last remnants of Neil Warnock’s regime.
His first game for the club saw them go down 5-0 to Swansea and by the next match, against Chelsea a week later, he’d been replaced by the Brazilian international Julio Cesar.
Since then he’s made just 12 appearances in all competitions, nine coming in the league. He went on record to say that had he known the former Inter custodian would have followed him so Loftus Road then he wouldn’t have joined the club.
Hindsight is a funny thing, Rob, but luckily, he’ll most likely be the number one again next season, albeit in the Championship.
Jon Walters – Stoke City
It’s not actually been a completely disastrous season for the Republic of Ireland international. In November he set the club’s record for the most consecutive Premier League starts with 61, and has scored 10 goals in all competitions.
However, it is usually a single moment that defines us, and our season, but in Walters’ case, it’s three moments.
During a game against Chelsea in January, Walters put the ball through his own net, not once, but twice, becoming only the fourth player in Premier League history to do so and then to top it all off, when he had an opportunity to redeem himself from the penalty spot, he missed.
Walters could score a hattrick in every one of Stoke’s remaining games this season but he’ll still be remembered for his antics during that one match.
It also doesn’t help that he’s been a central figure in a squad that until recently couldn’t buy a goal and looked to be nosediving straight for the Championship. Stoke are still not definitely safe from the drop, and if they go down Walters could be considered as the poster boy for a terrible season.
Emmanuel Adebayor – Tottenham Hotspur
Adebayor is one of those characters that has the uncanny ability to court controversy wherever he goes, and though he’s not behaved particularly badly this year, his form has been virtually nonexistent.
The 29-year-old made the move to White Heart Lane last season on loan from Manchester City where he set about winning over his detractors unable to forgive him of his association with the red half of North London.
But 18 goals later and hewas welcomed like a long lost son when he put pen to paper on a permanent deal over the summer.
However, the honeymoon period was soon over as in the early season encounter with Arsenal he went from hero to villain. Scoring the first goal of the game, all seemed to be going well until just minutes later he was sent off for an outrageous two-footed challenge on Santi Cazorla. Spurs went on to lose the game 5-2, capping off a bad day at the office for the Togolese international.
His form since hadn’t improved, adding just two more goals in the Premier League.
An opportunity arose to win some plaudits during the second leg of the club’s Europa League tie with Inter Milan last month and he took it, scoring the crucial away goal that secured their place in the quarter final.
But, unable to keep a good thing going, he missed the decisive penalty in the shootout against Basel, taking a ridiculous run up and blazing over the bar.
Many expect him to be moving away over the summer with Andre Villas-Boas reported to be looking for new striking options.
Fernando Torres – Chelsea
When a club pays £50 million for your services, you’d better make sure that you’re up to delivering the goods.
Many expected Torres’ move to Chelsea in 2011 to be the making of him, and taking the step up to being hailed as one of the best strikers the game has ever seen.
He had it all, the pace, vision, strength, movement and finishing ability, but he looks like a shell of the player that lit up Merseyside for four years.
Sadly, it’s become quite clear that he’s not going to recapture that form in West London. He’s now played over 120 games for Chelsea and his goals to games ration is still nowhere near what it should be. It’s worth pointing out that he is enjoying his most prolific season in West London, scoring 20 goals. However, only seven of those have come in the Premier League. Not even Rafa Benitez can get the best out of him anymore and with the senior Spaniard set to leave at the end of the season, the junior 29-year-old could be following.
It has been suggested for a while that a return to Spain could see him retain a shred of the credibility that his career had been built on up until his move, and with Radamel Falcao reportedly heading to the Blues in the summer then a move back in the other direction may not be out of the question.
Michael Owen – Stoke City
The injury prone striker was sent on his way by Man United last summer and was forced to look for pastures new and Stoke City boss Tony Pulis opted to hand the former England man one last bite at the Premier League cherry, it was a mistake that both the Britannia Stadium side and the 33 year old striker probably wish they hadn’t made.
The Potters may not have paid a penny for the experienced striker but would no doubt be forking out a decent whack in terms of covering his wage demands and though Pulis repeatedly stated that the move was an intelligent one it was undoubtedly one that failed to deliver.
Stoke City have struggled for goals all season, only QPR have managed less, and they would have hoped Owen would’ve made some sort of impact.
Injury issues, unsurprisingly, and a lack of confidence shown in him by Pulis meant that Owen didn’t start a single Premier League fixture.
Owen did manage one Premier League goal from his seven appearances, albeit a pointless last minute consolation in a defeat at Swansea City, before he wisely hung up his boots last month.