Messy multi-million pound Sunderland AFC transfer has to be one of the club's worst | OneFootball

Highlights

During their final years in the Premier League, Sunderland made some bizarre signings and some that just didn't work out for the club - especially for big money.

In those years, the Black Cats were struggling to stay in the top flight of English football and often fighting a relegation battle, and some of the recruitment did not help the various managers that took to the dugout at the Stadium of Light.

One of those was Jack Rodwell, who, of course, notoriously refused to rip up his contract as the Wearsiders started to tumble down the divisions and into League One despite his high wage and the fact he wasn't playing, whilst the likes of Papy Djilobodji and Didier Ndong were also not Sunderland's finest hours in the transfer window.

In those few years before relegation in 2017 though, one of the stranger deals that was agreed and completed was that of Ricky Alvarez, an Argentine international who will have to go down as one of the most forgettable players who caused the club a lot of issues.

Ricky Alvarez's time at Sunderland - what went wrong?

Attacking midfielder Alvarez showed flashes of brilliance for Inter Milan in Italy, but he made the move to Sunderland in the summer of 2014, initially on loan with the obligation to buy a year later if they were not relegated from the Premier League.

His temporary stint in England, though, was somewhat of a nightmare, as injury and fitness issues restricted the Argentinian to just 17 appearances in all competitions, with just four starts in his 13 Premier League showings.

Unfortunately for Sunderland though, the fact they stayed in the top flight meant that they had to commit to spending £9.2 million on the regularly injured and unfit midfielder - something that they tried to get out of due to injury issues that they believed Inter should have paid for.

It took two years for the decision on the fee to be settled by the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS), and in the summer of 2017, after they had been relegated from the Premier League, Sunderland were ordered to pay Inter the fee.

And it didn't stop there as Alvarez also went to the CAS to claim for lost earnings whilst the saga was ongoing in 2015, which saw him unable to play for Sunderland, and he was successful in 2021, which led to the then-League One Black Cats having to pay £4.7 million to the player.

The whole ordeal proved to be extremely costly for the club, especially when all the costs came after they had dropped out of the Premier League, and it would probably make sure that Sunderland didn't enter any more obligation to buy agreements with loanees.

What did Ricky Alvarez go on to do following his Sunderland stint?

With Alvarez still at the centre of a legal battle in the second half of 2015, he was given the approval to return to Italy to sign for Sampdoria on a permanent basis in January 2016 whilst his Sunderland transfer was battled in the courts.

Alvarez had an underwhelming stint there though, and in 2018 he headed to Mexico to play for Atlas, but a cruciate knee ligament injury just a few months into his stint there effectively ruined what he could have done at the club.

And in 2020, Alvarez returned to his first club - Velez Sarsfield - in his home nation of Argentina, where he played until the end of the 2021 season, but he retired from the game pretty early at the start of 2022 at the age of 33, with perhaps the knee injuries taking their toll over the years.

Whilst he may have showed a bit more on the pitch than the likes of Rodwell Sunderland, Alvarez was a costly failure for the Black Cats and a lot of money went down the drain on him at a time when they simply could not afford to waste a penny.