Premier League's top ten failed summer signings who could skip or be sent off in January

These ten players were signed for a total of £108.6million in the summer but could be transferred at the earliest opportunity in January. Chelsea must be stopped.

10) Julio Enciso As is the case with most Brighton signings until they slowly broke into the first team and guaranteed the Seagulls a hefty profit on their initial outlay, few could name the £9.5m Paraguay international striker they bought in the summer. The club hopes Julio Enciso will follow the same path from stranger to Todd Boehly obsession as Moises Caicedo, Alexis MacAllister and Kaoru Mitoma.

A slight detour may be necessary. Apart from three Carabao Cup starts and half an hour against Middlesbrough in a 5-1 FA Cup defeat, the teenager has been largely sidelined. There's a positive slant to the 112 Premier League minutes he's received so far, as they've all come in Brighton's last six games as Roberto De Zerbi begins to mix his game up a bit more. game. But a few months away would do Enciso good, especially with young Evan Ferguson suddenly overtaking him in the pecking order.

9) Sekou Mara A teenage non-scoring striker with obvious ability but clear limits: Sekou Mara was destined for Southampton long before Ralph Hasenhuttl said he "came here to score goals and showed in the French league that he could do it”.

Seven goals in 34 League One appearances took him to Saints, where he is yet to score in 12 Premier League appearances.

It started off so well - with a superb assist on his debut in an August draw with Leeds - but Mara struggled to sustain himself within minutes. The Frenchman started three league games and played no more than an hour each time, while his four goals in reserve against Middlesbrough Under-21s were rewarded with back-to-back senior appearances as unused replacement.

And now Southampton have signed Mislav Orsic and Carlos Alcaraz in this transfer window, a competition for places Mara was already outright losing has increased even further.

8) Malcolm Ebiowei Crystal Palace was seen as one hell of a move to lure Malcolm Ebiowei to south-east London from Derby. Wayne Rooney had no choice but to rely on inexperienced youngsters towards the end of his time at Pride Park and he noted the striker 'has a really bright future' if he continues on the same path that brought him to the Premier League. at such an early stage.

But three Premier League appearances totaling just over half an hour - and all ending in scoreless defeats - have significantly dampened Ebiowei's enthusiasm to join the youth revolution of Patrick Vieira. Missing the decisive penalty in a Carabao Cup loss to Newcastle didn't help either. So the player was likely to welcome interest from Ipswich, Swansea, QPR and elsewhere, before settling on another link with Liam Rosenior at Hull City in a move that is expected to be finalized within the week. p>

7) Flynn Downes The popular theory is that West Ham are reluctant to trigger additions from a move for Flynn Downes that cost £9m with another £5m due to Swansea in potential bonuses. It is certainly an explanation. Another is that the midfielder was signed as a proactive replacement for Declan Rice. But a final guess is that David Moyes signed the 23-year-old entirely by accident.

That rings true when you consider that Downes started just eight games for West Ham across the Premier League, Europa Conference and Carabao Cup, was the club's best player in most if not all of those games, and that he thrives in the genre of the possession-based system Moyes has previously suggested he wants to pivot to, but it continues to be unfathomably overlooked. Moyes persists with struggling Tomas Soucek while granting Downes four minutes as a substitute in the FA Cup against Brentford. Make sense.

6) Thomas Strakosha "Maybe they were thinking of selling their keeper, I don't know. But clearly it's a situation we've only been in for a short time and it's a bit awkward today oday because for a goalkeeper who has more than 200 Serie A games with Lazio, finding himself not playing at Brentford is not easy, given that we are talking about an important club in the Premier League. an anomaly. He asked me to find a solution. We have our ears to the ground to listen to the opportunities that will arise. I wouldn't be surprised if something happened in January too because Brentford themselves understood the embarrassment of the boy in this situation."

The predicament of Thomas Strakosha and his agent Federico Pastorello was not expected. ...