Liverpool’s 15 most expensive sold players
By Ethan Lowe
Craig Bellamy
Date Sold: 10th July 2007 Appearances: 79 Goals: 18
Craig Bellamy is a rather unusual player when it comes to his time at Liverpool. A talented footballer, Bellamy made impressions at both Norwich and Coventry, earning himself a move to Newcastle where he played for four season. In 2001/02 (his first season with Newcastle) Bellamy won the PFA Young Player of the Year award, which showed his quality along with an impressive 43 goals in 128 games for Newcastle.
Ironically enough, the boyhood reds fan had a very public fall-out with Newcastle’s new manager and Liverpool legend Graeme Souness. Souness voiced his opinions of Bellamy in a Newcastle match program, saying “Craig Bellamy has been a disruptive influence from the minute I walked into this football club with his attitude to the coaching staff, to me and to his teammates.”
After this, Bellamy was sent on a brief loan to Celtic, but finally ended up playing for Blackburn Rovers – going on to score 17 goals in 32 games and being labelled the ‘buy of the season’. His impressive performances attracted the attention of Liverpool, who splashed out paying the £6million buy-out clause in his contract.
In this spell, Bellamy only made 33 starts and 9 substitute appearances, being highly inconsistent and not very reliable. You may remember him for his antics involving John Arne Riise and a golf club, and maybe even his celebration mocking that event, with Bellamy having been the centre of controversy all throughout his career.
Liverpool sold Bellamy on after just the one season, earning £7.5 million from the transfer and seeing him take 14th place on this list. Funnily enough, after spells at Manchester City and Cardiff, Bellamy returned to Liverpool on a free transfer and actually made a worthwhile impact to the side. His pace, quality running and good finishing saw him feature in almost 2 thirds of Liverpool’s games, and he managed to bag himself nine goals, with the most important of which taking Liverpool to the League Cup final.
14) Craig Bellamy: Sold for £7.5million
Next: 13