{"id":724042,"date":"2026-08-02T07:24:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T07:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/724042\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T07:24:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T07:24:11","slug":"what-happened-to-the-star-signings-your-club-never-made","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/724042\/","title":{"rendered":"What happened to the ‘star’ signings your club never made?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fans always get excited when the transfer window comes around.<\/p>\n

Your team is linked with a big-name signing and you start to dream they could be the ones to lead your club to glory.<\/p>\n

Tottenham<\/a> fans might have felt this way a few years ago when they were strongly linked with a young, prolific striker from Nigeria by the name of Gift Orban.<\/p>\n

They had every reason, on paper at least, to be excited.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 2023, Orban, then 21, was regarded as one of the hottest prospects in the game.<\/p>\n

After scoring 16 goals in 22 games for Norwegian top-flight side Stabaek, he moved to Belgian side Gent and continued his impressive goalscoring record, netting 20 times in 22 matches.<\/p>\n

In a wild four-day period in March 2023, he scored seven goals in two matches. He got four in a 6\u20132 away league win over Zulte Waregem, becoming the first Gent player with a four-goal haul in one game in the 21st Century.<\/p>\n

He then followed up with a quick-fire hat-trick in a 4\u20131 away victory over Istanbul Basaksehir in the Conference League last 16. <\/p>\n

That hat-trick was completed within three minutes and 25 seconds, at the time a record in Uefa club competitions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fans always get excited when the transfer window comes around. Your team is linked with a big-name signing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":724043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-724042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/724043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}