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Premier League

Crystal Palace

Chelsea

Deco was a big-name arrival at the Bridge but the legendary Portuguese player was in&nbsp;the twilight of his career when he linked up with Luiz Felipe Scolari's squad.
Indeed, he turned 31 shortly after joining from Barcelona for £8m and it quickly became apparent that he had&nbsp;left his best years behind him in Catalunya.

Deco didn't adapt well to the pace of football in England and his Brazilian boss didn't last long either, with Scolari sacked in February 2009.

Deco

Yossi Benayoun was another player signed by Chelsea from Liverpool but he only made&nbsp;14 league appearances after his £5.5m transfer from Anfield.
The former West Ham United man had a good career, aside from his spell in London, but he was the last thirty-something to be offered more than a one-year deal, as the club implemented a new policy of short contracts for older players.&nbsp;

Benayoun was loaned to Arsenal and then West Ham before eventually joining QPR on a permanent deal.

Yossi Benayoun

Jose Bosingwa joined Chelsea in a&nbsp;£16.2m&nbsp;deal and many thought that he might make a big impact at Stamford Bridge after impressing at Porto.&nbsp;
However, he ended up getting squeezed out of the team by the initially unfancied Branislav Ivanovic after some shaky defensive displays.&nbsp;

Chelsea decided not to offer a contract to the Portuguese&nbsp;defender, who ended up at QPR,&nbsp;another move that didn't work out well for him or his new club.&nbsp;

Jose Bosingwa

Yuri Zhirkov, Andrey Arshavin, Pavel Pogrebnyak and&nbsp;Roman Pavlyuchenko all arrived in England from Russia around the same as the national team was enjoying its best group of players in decades.&nbsp;
However, none managed to truly establish themselves in the division and Chelsea's&nbsp;left-back struggled the most to setttle in England, after his&nbsp;£18.6m move from CSKA Moscow.&nbsp;

Ashley Cole was ageing but Zhirkov didn't put him under any pressure at all and the Blues were more than happy to accept a reported £13.2m offer from&nbsp;Anzhi Makhachkala for the Russian's services in 2011.

Yuri Zhirkov

Michy Batshuayi is Chelsea's sixth most expensive signing of all time but the striker has failed to convince Antonio Conte that he is even worth starting when there are injuries to those ahead of him in the pecking order.&nbsp;
The Belgium international has scored 17 goals in 50 appearances, including the title-winner against West Brom&nbsp;last season, but&nbsp;has been limited to appearances against lesser opposition or as a substitute.&nbsp;

He has made only four&nbsp;Premier League starts in&nbsp;18 months at the club since joining from Marseille for €40 million - seeing out 90 minutes for the first time against Brighton on Saturday -&nbsp;and his World Cup place is under threat due to a lack of match action.&nbsp;

Michy Batshuayi

Chelsea signed&nbsp;Fiorentina winger Juan&nbsp;Cuadrado&nbsp;for an initial fee of £23.3m at&nbsp;the end of the 2015 January transfer window.
The Colombian international has undoubtedly proved his&nbsp;quality on the Italian and world stage but couldn't settle at Chelsea or in England in general.&nbsp;

His family struggled to adapt to life in London and he pushed for an exit despite Antonio Conte wanting to work for him. Chelsea recouped all the money that they spent on him in the end, through loan fees and his ultimate sale to Juventus.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Juan Cuadrado

Asier del Horno is famous for being the player who produced a knee-high tackle on a 19-year-old&nbsp;Lionel Messi. He was sent off, but the Champions League flashpoint was perhaps proof that his £8m move to England was never going to work out for him.&nbsp;&nbsp;
The Spain international won the Premier League in his only season at the club but Chelsea made a loss on him&nbsp;as they sold him to Valencia for £4.8m just 12 months after his arrival.

Asier del Horno

Chelsea spent an initial&nbsp;£14m on Augsburg defender Baba Rahman in 2015, with the potential for a&nbsp;further £8m in performance-related add-ons, which probably won't be met.&nbsp;
Indeed, the Ghanaian full-back&nbsp;suffered a torn cruciate ligament while on loan at Schalke last season, having failed to prove his worth at Stamford Bridge.

The defender will hopefully find a club to rehabilitate his career but his move to west London has not worked for anyone other than Augbsurg.

Baba Rahman

Shaun Wright-Phillips&nbsp;joined Chelsea from Manchester City in 2005 for £21m. He was arguably England's most promising player at the time but&nbsp;he was inconsistent in his first season Stamford Bridge, earning only 15 starts in an already strong Blues side.&nbsp;
He ended up missing out on the 2006 World Cup in Germany and he ultimately rejoined Manchester City for a fee thought to be around £8.5m. He made 125 appearances for Chelsea but almost half of them were from the bench in what ended as an expensive mistake.

Shaun Wright-Phillips

Khalid Boulahrouz will go down as one of Chelsea's toughest ever players, but he proved that aggression isn't the only attribute required at the top of the game.
The Dutchman was part of the Hamburg defence that conceded only&nbsp;30 goals in 34 games during the&nbsp;2005-06 campaign&nbsp;before moving to the Blues, but he failed to continue his great record.&nbsp;

Boulahrouz was bought for £8.5m by Mourinho's Chelsea and he was bought in to be a utility man in an already strong defence.&nbsp;He strangely wore the No.9 shirt that was vacated by Hernan Crespo, but&nbsp;only made 13 appearances for the club.&nbsp;

He managed to rack up five&nbsp;yellow cards and one red card as he failed to compete with John Terry and Ricardo Carvalho for a starting spot. Even when Carvalho was injured, he failed to get in, with Michael Essien used as a make-shift centre-back ahead of him.&nbsp;

Khalid Boulahrouz

Chelsea made the puzzling decision to bring in Papy Djilobodji for £4 million from&nbsp;Nantes&nbsp;in 2015.
He immediately failed to make Jose Mourinho's cut for the Champions League squad and played in only one minute of football during his spell at Stamford Bridge, when he came on for Radamel Falcao in the early rounds of the League Cup against Walsall.&nbsp;

He was loaned to&nbsp;Werder Bremen before being sold to Sunderland. At least Chelsea made a profit on him as Sunderland paid £8m for his services, but once again he failed to prove his worth as the club were relegated and he was sent on loan back to France.&nbsp;

Papy Djilobodji

Fernando Torres became the most expensive player to move between two British clubs when Chelsea paid Liverpool £50m for their star striker on a dramatic deadline day in January 2011.
The Spain international was a shadow of his former self at Stamford Bridge, though, clearly burdened by the great weight of expectancy that came with his colossal&nbsp;price tag. Indeed, he quickly became a&nbsp;target of&nbsp;ridicule for&nbsp;opposition fans and the media, as he suffered a dramatic decline.

It took him&nbsp;903 minutes to score for the Blues and he eventually left the club, for nothing, when AC Milan made his loan move permanent in 2015, only to then&nbsp;immediately return to&nbsp;Atletico Madrid.

Despite his dire form, he still won the Champions League, Europa League and FA Cup at Chelsea, having failed to lift any trophies at Liverpool, in spite of&nbsp;his fantastic strike-rate.&nbsp;

Fernando Torres

After Manchester United secured Ruud Van Nistelrooy from PSV in a £19m move in 2001, a new prolific poacher emerged in Eindhoven - Mataja Kezman.
His 105 goals in 122 games alerted Jose Mourinho and Roman Abramovich to another goal-machine but&nbsp;Kezman couldn't replicate Van Nistelrooy's success in England.&nbsp;

Handed the&nbsp;No.9 shirt, he played 24 league games and scored only four goals in his sole season at the club. He did score in the League Cup final against Liverpool in a 3-2 win, so it wasn't all bad, but his career went into free-fall after his spell at Stamford Bridge.

Still, Chelsea somehow managed to recoup the £5.3m that they invested in Kezman when they sold him to Atletico Madrid. Unsurprisingly, the Rojiblancos regretted that decision, as Kezman struggled in Spain too.&nbsp;

Mateja Kezman

Chelsea announced themselves as a new footballing superpower in 2006 with the signing of Andriy Shevchenko from AC Milan for £30m. &nbsp;
The move was masterminded by Abramovich and&nbsp;Chelsea's then&nbsp;chief executive&nbsp;Peter Kenyon, whom the club had poached from Manchester United.&nbsp;

Shevchenko struggled to adapt tothe&nbsp;physical style of play in English football, though, and it quickly became clear that the 29-year-old was past his best.

His&nbsp;£121,000-a-week wages made him the highest earner in the squad but, on the field, he couldn't even manage to get into double figures&nbsp;in his two years at the club.&nbsp;

Nine goals in 48 Premier League games saw him released 11 months early from his contract when he rejoined Dynamo Kiev for free.&nbsp;

Andriy Shevchenko

Nemanja Matic helped Chelsea win the Premier League title in Antonio Conte's first season at the club, but his summer 2017 sale to Manchester United was not going to be an issue according to the manager as they had&nbsp;Tiemoue Bakayoko ready to step in.
The 23-year-old was a £40 million signing from Monaco and was expected to contribute straight away and be a long-term solution in central midfield. However, his debut season was filled with inconsistent performances, including an absolutely awful half hour against Watford where his early red card paved the way for a 4-1 humiliation.

Tiemoue Bakayoko

Chelsea transfers: Tiemoue Bakayoko and the worst signings of the Roman Abramovich era | Goal.com UK

Chelsea have had some high profile failures since Roman Abramovich gained ownership of the club despite their climb to the top table of European football