Chelsea signing Salah, De Bruyne; Coutinho best signing, exit: January transfer window awards

Remember when Chelsea signed the two best players of the Premier League's last half-decade, Mohamed Salah and Kevin De Bruyne, only to let them both go? Us too. With that in mind, ESPN FC's Ryan O'Hanlon decided to look at some of the weird, wild and wonderful things that have happened in the January transfer window.

Eleven years ago, the January transfer window exploded on the final day. First, Fernando Torres jumped across nascent rivalry lines to join Chelsea for $64.4 million. «El Nino» was only 26, coming off of three-and-half seasons at Liverpool where he averaged 0.89 non-penalty goals+assists per 90 minutes. Absolutely electric and truly unstoppable when he was on the field, Torres's only issue was just that: staying on the field. He hadn't broken 20 starts in either of the previous two Premier League seasons. In 2010-11, though, he appeared newly robust, making 22 starts before departing for Stamford Bridge.

After Liverpool slipped out of the top four two straight years and lost two-thirds of their midfield — Xabi Alonso to Real Madrid in the summer of 2009, Javier Mascherano to Barcelona in the summer of 2010 — losing Torres seemed to signal an end to the club's run as a serious contender for a Champions League place. But then, on the same day, they reinvested $45.1 million of the Torres funds in 22-year-old Andy Carroll from Newcastle. Carroll had scored 11 non-penalty goals and assisted four more in his first half-season as a Premier League starter, and he, too, could seem unstoppable at times, albeit in a completely different fashion to Torres.

Of course, both moves were complete disasters. Torres' scoring rate had dropped by about 40% in 2010-11 for Liverpool, and it never recovered. He scored 19