3 times Charlton Athletic got ripped off in the transfer market

With multiple changes of ownership in the recent past, Charlton Athletic have conducted some very surprising transfer business with a lot of their incomings failing to justify the price tag they arrived with.

More shrewd operations have taken place since with the likes of George Dobson, Sean Clare and Sam Lavelle representing excellent pieces of business in the summer of 2021, while less can be said about the loan acquisitions of Nile John and Juan Castillo.

As an important, but possibly better informed, summer transfer window approaches we are taking a trip down Memory Lane to remember some of the poorer business the Addicks have conducted in recent years.

Here, we have taken a look at three times Charlton got ripped off in the transfer market…

Ronnie Schwartz

Due to personal reasons, Schwartz returned late to pre-season in the summer of 2021 and failed to make a senior appearance for the Addicks in 2021/22 before his contract was mutually terminated.

Charlton paid £241,000, as per Transfermarkt, to lure Schwartz, 31 at the time, to The Valley in January 2021, he scored once in 16 outings for the club and is currently playing in the Danish second tier.

Nicky Ajose

Nicky Ajose was a signing that offered a lot of promise in the summer of 2016, however the striker’s career began on a steep downward trajectory after arriving in South London and the 30-year-old has been without a club since leaving Exeter City last summer.

Brought in for £900,000, according to Transfermarkt, the mobile striker scored 11 goals in 58 appearances before joining the Grecians on a free in the summer of 2019.

El-Hadji Ba

There were many candidates from the Roland Duchatelet era, Christophe Lepoint and Zakarya Bergdich came close but we have