Ranking the 20 Worst Deals of the 2015 January Transfer Window

Now the dust has settled and the ticker tape has been cleared, we can officially say that the 2014/15 European season has drawn to a close.

For some, it was a campaign filled with memorable moments; for others, it was a season to forget, with poor recruitment playing a part in the disappointments.

Back in January, hopes were high that new signings would either kick-start or reinvigorate various clubs' seasons, but plenty didn't quite work out that way.

Using World Soccer's list of completed deals from European football's top five leagues, here are the top 20 worst deals of the January 2015 transfer window, with the clubs involved no doubt eager to learn from their mistakes.

Back at the club for whom he was scoring Champions League goals five-and-a-half years ago, Alberto Gilardino's move back to Serie A from Chinese football hasn't really been a roaring success.

The 32-year-old forward did hit his stride with goals toward the end of the season, but it was his role in damaging results around March and April that hardly helped his side's push for a top-three finish and the Champions League football it brings—something they never really looked like getting.

Champions League goals at CSKA Moscow—including two in November's historic win at Manchester City—underlined the quality of the Ivory Coast forward Seydou Doumbia, but things haven't quite gone to plan since his January move to Roma.

Doumbia needed nine games to get off the mark in Serie A, and he drew the anger of some of the club's supporters when he appeared to fail to warm-up when he was on the bench during a match against Inter Milan, reported by the Daily Mail.

The Ivorian still has plenty of time to put things right in Italy, but he hasn't got off to the best start.

Billed as the man who would keep Leicester City in the Premier League when he completed his club-record move from Croatian football, Andrej Kramaric instead watched much of the Foxes' great escape from the sidelines, as the likes of Leonardo Ulloa, Jamie Vardy and David Nugent were selected ahead of him.

Kramaric—who was in prolific form for Rijeka before the £9 million move—did manage league goals against Arsenal and Queens Park Rangers, as well as one in the FA Cup at Aston Villa, but that was about it for the 23-year-old, who does at least offer the hope that he'll be more of a force to be reckoned with next season.

There can be no doubting the quality of Xherdan Shaqiri—the scorer of the 50th hat-trick in the World Cup finals when he netted a treble for Switzerland against Honduras last summer—but there is also no getting away from the fact he has struggled for form since moving to Inter Milan in January.

They are struggles that have forced Inter boss Roberto Mancini to have to deny rumours that Shaqiri could be leaving the club this summer, via the Daily Mail. It is hoped that this is just a temporary blip in the career of a player who can be terrific on his day.

As with most things to do with Parma this season, Silvestre Varela's campaign was a bit of a mess.

A goalscorer for Portugal at last summer's World Cup, when he popped up with a late equaliser against the United States that kept his country in the tournament at the time, the winger moved on a brief loan spell to West Bromwich Albion, where he was turfed out almost immediately after the arrival of new boss Tony Pulis in January.

A temporary switch to Parma followed, and although he managed three goals for the club, he was unable to prevent a dismal relegation that saw them finish 18 points from safety.

It wasn't an easy season to join Borussia Dortmund, who were in the relegation zone when Germany-born Slovenia international Kevin Kampl signed for the club from Red Bull Salzburg in January.

The highly rated 24-year-old midfielder started his Dortmund career in Jurgen Klopp's starting XI but was gradually squeezed out, failing to score in his 16 appearances this season and picking up an extra-time red card in the DFB-Pokal semi-final against Bayern Munich just 25 minutes after coming off the bench.

When they lost Wilfried Bony to Manchester City in January, Swansea City needed to replace the Ivorian's goals. Instead, they got Nelson Oliveira on loan.

Making his fifth temporary switch away from parent club Benfica, Oliveira struck just once in his 11 appearances for the Swans and became something of an unlucky omen for them.

In what was a very impressive season collectively for Garry Monk's men, they failed to win seven of the 11 games in which Oliveira featured, and the 23-year-old has now returned to Benfica.

If the move away from Liverpool was supposed to allow Spanish youngster Suso to finally show a level of consistency to go along with his undoubted talent, it hasn't happened yet.

Suso actually scored for the Reds in his one and only appearance for them in 2014/15, a League Cup tie against Middlesbrough, but no more goals have followed during what has been a typically frustrating half-season in Milan, where he has featured just six times and managed to get himself sent off on his most recent appearance for the club in a defeat at Sassuolo.

Hopefully next season brings a fresh start.

At the time, he was a signing seen as vital to improve the mood around a depressed Villa Park, and the Spaniard Carles Gil impressed everyone with his cameo performance in a 2-0 loss at home to Liverpool in January, when Villa were desperate to cling on to any good news.

A fine FA Cup goal against Bournemouth followed before Villa realised that the real problem with their side wasn't the players but rather manager Paul Lambert.

Lambert was soon axed. Tim Sherwood and his brand of motivation-based management came in, and Gil became a bit-part figure, one who is now demanding showdown talks with Sherwood over his future, according to the Daily Telegraph.

This will forever be the campaign in which Yaya Sanogo finally grabbed his first goal for Arsenal—November's second-minute Champions League strike against Borussia Dortmund—but his January loan move to Crystal Palace to gain some more experience didn't quite work out.

Sanogo scored in an FA Cup victory at Southampton but remained goalless in his 10 Premier League appearances for the club, with the likes of Glenn Murray, Wilfried Zaha, Yannick Bolasie, Fraizer Campbell and Dwight Gayle all offering more for Alan Pardew, who restricted Sanogo to the kind of bit-part role he'd been used to at Arsenal.

You certainly couldn't accuse Eljero Elia of not making a good start to his temporary Southampton career, given his lively debut in a win at Manchester United followed by two goals in a 2-1 victory at Newcastle United. However, things quickly went sour for the Dutch winger at St. Mary's.

The Saints' Champions League challenge tailed off toward the end of the campaign, and after those two wins in his first two matches, nine of the other 15 matches in which Elia featured ended in defeats.

Those defeats weren't all his fault, of course, but Saints fans struggled to warm to the 28-year-old 2010 World Cup finalist, and there aren't many of them hoping he'll be back at the club next season.

The curious career of Lukas Podolski took another strange turn when he signed for Inter Milan on loan from Arsenal in January—but he might wonder why he bothered.

Flitting in and out of a poor Inter side, Podolski scored just one goal in his 18 appearances for the club, with the Daily Mail now claiming that the Germany international's future remains a mystery, with neither Arsenal nor Inter seeing a space for him in their squad next season.

It's hard to believe he's still only 30, but whoever buys him will be getting one of European football's most infuriating talents of the past decade.

All new signings deserve time to adapt to new surroundings, particularly those coming into the Premier League, given that we are increasingly told how difficult it is to adapt to life in England, but you get the sense that Juan Cuadrado will need to impress right from the start of next season if Chelsea fans are to truly take to him.

Playing in a system that doesn't seem to suit him, the Colombian undoubtedly has great quality, as he showed at last year's World Cup, but the failure to do anything of note during his brief Chelsea career so far has got alarm bells ringing, with the Daily Mirror's Darren Lewis even suggesting that the swiftest of exits could be on the cards for the quicksilver winger. 

After his adventure in Turkey lasted just six months, Shola Ameobi headed back to the Premier League to team up with his old Newcastle United boss Alan Pardew at Crystal Palace in January, yet it's not quite clear why.

With an abundance of forwards already on the books at Selhurst Park, the 33-year-old Ameobi pitched up and appeared from the bench four times for the Eagles—appearances that added up to a total of 38 minutes on the pitch.

We're not so sure that flight back from Turkey was worth it, Shola.

Unsurprisingly for anyone who remembers his Manchester United career, Portuguese winger Bebe isn't exactly tearing things up now he's moved on to pastures new.

After a summer move to Benfica brought about a handful of appearances, his January loan move to Primera Liga side Cordoba was seen as the perfect chance to showcase some of the ability that Sir Alex Ferguson and United must have seen in him once.

Instead, the winger failed to score in his 18 matches for the club, of which the rock-bottom Califes lost a staggering 14, including an 8-0 defeat to Barcelona in his final appearance.

Although the current generation of German footballers are rightly being lauded for their skills, there are some who have been left behind.

Winger Mark Marin, once highly regarded, has seen his career nosedive in the past couple of years, so much so that his January loan move from Chelsea to Anderlecht—after a similar spell at Fiorentina was written off—was cut short by the Belgian side just two months in, as detailed by the London Evening Standard.

It means that the Blues now have to find another buyer for the 26-year-old, who still has two years left on his contract.

If you blinked, then you'd have missed Samuel Eto'o's Everton career, but the Cameroonian veteran did at least show glimpses of his quality in his six months with the Blues—such as the double strike in a win at Burnley in October.

He always appeared determined to quickly move on, though, but after getting his wish and switching to Sampdoria in January, he endured something of a nightmare campaign back in Serie A.

La Samp still had an outside chance of reaching the Champions League, but after pinning their hopes on the ageing Eto'o to fire them there, he responded with just two goals in 18 appearances.

As Atletico Madrid have improved in recent years, they've had to jettison certain players along the way, and the Uruguayan winger Cristian Rodriguez emphatically became one of them in 2014/15.

The former Porto man scored for Atletico in the Copa del Rey in December, but a lack of opportunities saw him switch to troubled Parma on loan in January, and that was when things really started to go downhill.

With the club marooned at the bottom of Serie A, Rodriguez played just six times, losing four of them and somewhat fittingly getting sent off on his final appearance against Atalanta before going out on another loan, this time to Gremio in Brazil.

There were brief flashes of what we know Mauro Zarate is capable of during his first couple of months at West Ham United, which featured goals at Crystal Palace and Everton, but as things quickly turned sour, he was sent on loan to Queens Park Rangers for the remainder of his first season back in England since his spell at Birmingham City in 2008.

Loftus Road was where the fun began. Harry Redknapp left the club just days after signing Zarate, and the Argentinian would play for a total of just 71 minutes over four matches before the season was out.

As reported by the London Evening Standard, things came to a head when boss Chris Ramsey left him out of the squad to face Liverpool at Anfield, which caused Zarate to storm off and make his own way back to London, effectively ending his QPR career in the process.

He's still got two years left on his West Ham contract, though.

As bad as some of the aforementioned moves have turned out to be, none can match the sheer lunacy of Hatem Ben Arfa's move back to Ligue 1 to "play" for Nice.

The French midfielder—once regarded as one of his country's top talents, picking up 13 caps for Les Bleus—moved to Hull City on loan at the start of 2014/15 but not before playing a costly match for parent club Newcastle United's under-21 side.

That came back to haunt him. After storming out of Hull following nine uneventful appearances and the cancellation of his Newcastle contract, his free transfer to Nice in January was swiftly followed by a FIFA ban from playing for the club for the rest of the season because he had already appeared for two other clubs in official games during 2014/15.

Ben Arfa, who said that he would have turned down a move to Real Madrid at that point, such was his determination to play in Ligue 1, according to the BBC Sport, was left frustrated. In February, he told a news conference that his Nice "career" was already over despite his signing an 18-month deal with the club, as per the Guardian.

Where he'll turn up next in anyone's guess.