The biggest football transfers that never happened

Zlatan at Arsenal? Shevchenko at West Ham? Football could have been so different had these gone through.

Admit it: before a ball was kicked at the start of last season, Mohamed Salah was nowhere near your fantasy team, was he? Alvaro Morata and Alexandre Lacazette were your big hopes for points up top, weren't they?

It's OK. None of us can predict the future. 

Sometimes even the best managers turn down a transfer that could leave them kicking themselves. Or, sometimes, things just fall through.

Here are just a few examples of transfers that could have changed the course of Premier League history.

In 2009, newly minted Manchester City were looking to spend a bit of their bulging bank balance to sign Brazilian playmaker Kaka.

AC Milan and Kaka's heads were turned by City's staggering £108m offer. It was a deal so big that even today, nearly 10 years later, it would only be eclipsed by the fees Paris St-Germain paid for Neymar and Kylian Mbappe.

One City fan was so sure the deal would be done that he got the playmaker's name tattooed, external on his chest. 

But, in the end, the 2007 Ballon d'Or winner decided the timing wasn't right and turned down the chance to move to Manchester, leaving City chief exec Garry Cook red-faced and claiming AC Milan had 'bottled it'., external

Dignity, Garry. Dignity.

The pin-up one-club man? In 2005, just off the back of a sensational Champions League win, Steven Gerrard upset the red half of Merseyside by handing in a transfer request at Anfield.

A new young buck by the name of Jose Mourinho was interested in acquiring the midfielder's services for his Stamford Bridge project.

Hysteria ensued and shirts were burned, but, eventually, as Jamie Carragher put it, Gerrard realised the satisfaction of one title at Liverpool, 'would always eclipse three or four at Stamford Bridge'.

Unfortunately for both players, Chelsea have won the Premier League four times since, while Liverpool still wait.

Before he was well known as one of the world's best strikers, young Robert Lewandowski was the object of Sam Allardyce's admiration at Blackburn Rovers. The Lancashire club offered Lech Poznan £4m for the Polish striker in 2010. 

However, volcanic ash spewing into the sky from Iceland disrupted air travel and prevented Lewandowski from visiting Blackburn.

He has since admitted, external Rovers were his second choice behind Borussia Dortmund anyway, but maybe a weekend break in Lancashire with 'Big Sam' could have charmed him enough to stay.

In 2004, Bolton Wanderers were flying high, with dreams of Europe. Sam Allardyce (yep, him again) went big, with an enquiry for 32-year old Brazilian World Cup winner Rivaldo, who had been frozen out at AC Milan.

Rivaldo himself made a statement, saying: "I want the challenge of trying to get Bolton into Europe for the first time in their history. It is an exciting time."

In the end, he had a change of heart and went to Olympiakos instead.

Bolton finished that season tied on points with Liverpool, three points off the top four. Last season they scored a last-gasp goal on their final game to avoid dropping down to the third tier.

It's folklore now that Harry Redknapp nearly signed one of the world's deadliest strikers at the time for West Ham in 1994. Harry recalls, external that he had Shevchenko over for a four-day assessment, playing against Barnet reserves.

However, Redknapp's previous experience managing eastern European players put him off signing Sheva.

"He didn't pull up any trees but looked decent enough. But this was just after I had had all those problems with the Romanian lads and I thought the last thing I needed was a Ukrainian."

And, just like that, another one got away.

In 2000, Arsene Wenger invited a modest young Swedish teenager called Zlatan Ibrahimovic over to meet his young Arsenal team. He had given him a shirt with the number nine on and everything. It was all going so well. Until Wenger asked him to do a trial.

As Zlatan has since explained, external: "I was like, 'No way! Zlatan doesn't do auditions'."

Imagine that Invincibles team, plus Zlatan. Wow.