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Tijjani Reijnders leaving Manchester City only a year after arriving for more than £45m is a remarkable twist.

With that in mind, here is the most expensive XI made up of players who joined a Premier League club from overseas, stayed for just one season in England, and then moved on.

There are not many options in goal — at least not until Lucas Perri completes his expected exit from Leeds.

For the moment, it is a tie between the two £4.5m Italian goalkeepers, Matteo Sereni and Massimo Taibi, formerly of Ipswich Town and Manchester United respectively.

After joining Bournemouth on loan for the 2025-26 season, Jimenez activated a permanent transfer in February.

But Bournemouth suspended him during an internal investigation. A few months later, the former AC Milan wing-back returned to Italy after Fiorentina signed Jimenez on loan.

Koulibaly had been linked with a Premier League switch for years, but when Chelsea finally got the deal done, it was over quickly.

He had been one of Serie A’s most impressive defenders while at Napoli, but that level never came with him to the Premier League.

At 31 and clearly beyond his peak, Koulibaly made 32 appearances for Chelsea in the 2022-23 season before the club accepted a loss when selling him to Al Hilal.

Most of the players in this line-up departed after one season because they failed to impress, but that was not the case with Huijsen.

Instead, his one year at Bournemouth ended because he proved too good for the club to hold on to.

Real Madrid moved for him soon after his transfer from Juventus. Bournemouth were powerless to stop it because of his £50m release clause.

That at least handed them a healthy profit and the distinction of having played a part in Huijsen’s development story.

There is plenty more Chelsea to come in this team.

At left-back, the pick is Filipe Luis, who arrived from Atletico Madrid in 2014 and then returned there a year later.

The Brazilian lost the battle for regular minutes on the left to right-back Cesar Azpilicueta, and by the end of the season he was back in the Spanish capital for a second four-year stay.

To be fair to him, he did leave as a Premier League champion.

Things have fallen apart very quickly for Reijnders at City. He began brightly after his move from AC Milan, registering a goal and an assist on his Premier League debut.

But Reijnders’ performances dropped sharply as the campaign progressed and he is now set to leave for Al-Qadsiah in Saudi Arabia.

He had arrived at City as Serie A’s reigning midfielder of the year. It has been quite a fall from that level.

As promised, here is more Chelsea.

Bakayoko became the Blues’ second most expensive signing at that stage when he joined from Monaco in 2017. It soon turned into a disaster.

He played often enough, making 43 appearances across the 2017-18 season. The problem was what he did — or failed to do — in those matches, and that ended his Chelsea future.

One year after arriving, Bakayoko started a long sequence of loan spells away from Chelsea. The next five years of his career, until he was eventually released, were spent entirely out on loan at AC Milan, Monaco or Napoli.

Diaby joined Aston Villa as their record signing in 2023 and scored six goals in 38 matches during his only Premier League season.

He then left in 2024 for a slight profit when he joined Al-Ittihad, which felt a pity given he was only 25.

And yes, another Chelsea entry.

This was such a strange transfer that the player concerned did not even last a full season, making the other 10 names in this XI seem like long-serving figures by comparison.

Chelsea had previously brought Felix to the Premier League on loan, but had shown no real sign of wanting to buy him afterwards.

Yet a year later, after he had spent the 2023-24 season with Barcelona, they signed the attacking midfielder permanently in a part-exchange deal involving Conor Gallagher.

Felix was not part of their plans and left on loan for AC Milan that February, before completing a permanent move to Al-Nassr in the summer of 2025.

This may well be the most famous example of a player arriving in the Premier League and lasting just one year.

Di Maria was one of the finest forwards of his generation, but Manchester United never truly saw his best form.

Following his 2014 move from Real Madrid in a British record transfer, Di Maria was deployed in several different roles but never really settled in any of them.

After scoring only three Premier League goals, he left for PSG in 2015, where he went on to score more than 50 Ligue 1 goals across seven seasons and looked like the real Di Maria once more.

Yes, Chelsea again.

There is one caveat here: Lukaku had already played in the Premier League before the transfer in question. But because he arrived from a foreign club and never played in England again afterwards, he still fits the rules.

Chelsea decided to bring Lukaku back from Inter in 2021 after his encouraging return of 47 goals across two Serie A seasons.

The Blues were not put off by the fact that he had failed to score for them in his earlier spell, or that his previous Premier League stint with Manchester United had fallen short of expectations.

So Chelsea broke their transfer record to sign Lukaku. He then produced a total of eight Premier League goals.

By the end of that season, the powerful Belgian striker was on his way back to Inter on loan. His next loan spell also kept him in Italy with Roma, before he eventually settled — relatively speaking, in his case — at Napoli.