When Alan Pardew splashed £5.75m on Jordon Mutch in 2015, it didn’t appear to be an awful decision.
Apart from a brief and ineffective stint at QPR after leaving Cardiff, it was with the Bluebirds where Mutch made his name and actually looked like a decent Premier League player.
In the 2013/14 season, the ex-England U21 international netted seven goals and grabbed six assists in a struggling Cardiff side who were ultimately relegated under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer – despite that, the Englishman stood out as a star performer, with a few screamers under his belt too.
However, he was downright awful for Crystal Palace – even that could be considered an understatement.
Mutch made a total of 40 appearances for the Eagles before having his contract terminated by mutual consent in January 2019, four years after his arrival.
For those of you who are strong at maths, you’ll be able to work out that this means the £5.75m man only averaged ten appearances for every season he was at Selhurst Park – that lack of availability isn’t ideal, but he didn’t even score a goal or record an assist in that time either!
For the south Londoners to have spent nearly £6m on a player who wasn’t involved in a single goal across four years, and then had his contract terminated – obviously earning Palace nothing back on their initial investment – makes the signing of Mutch certainly amongst the worst of Steve Parish’s reign at Selhurst Park.
The former Watford man is now worth just £900k – according to Transfermarkt – and is playing in the Eliteserien, the top-flight of Norwegian football, which isn’t the highest standard to say the least.
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The 28-year-old’s career just seemed to go more and more downhill after he left Cardiff, and Crystal Palace were unfortunate enough to become embroiled in this once-talented midfielder’s saddening drop down the footballing ladder.
In other news, this Ian Holloway gamble from 2013 was well worth the risk for Crystal Palace…
