Football signings who looked gutted to be at their new club

Ah, signing for a football club, every child's daydream. Clutching your club's shirt in front of their field of dreams, where you'll be strutting your stuff in front of thousands every week, for money. The cameras are flashing. The press are clamouring for a comment. Your manager's stood beside you, beaming. It's real. You made it. This is the most glorious photo-opp of your life.

Wrong. At some point in your career as a professional footballer, the sheen of actually being a professional paid to play football wears off. And at some point, so does your talent, and at some point you're woken at 5 in the morning and told to get in the car because you're needed in some provincial town in the Midlands where you're due to hold a replica jersey in a drab carpark while fans on social media send the club abusive messages because they've never heard of you.

Here are the best times this particular anguish has been captured on camera.

Joe Hart - Manchester City to Torino

Aaron Lennon - Tottenham to Everton

Lennon's photoshoot became so infamously moribund that when he completed his full transfer to the Toffees a year later, they re-did the whole thing in the same locations with Aaron now beaming like a man on a powerful psychoactive substance.

Gael Bigirimana, Haris Vuckic and Remi Streete - Newcastle to Rangers

These three have lost their beloved pet dog Sandy (aged 9, collie terrier, brown with white smudge over the right eye, friendly) and are appealing to the general public for help. If you have any information whatsoever, please get in touch. Reward offered.

Nicolas Anelka - Free agent to West Brom

A lot to discuss here. The parping royalty free version of the Thomas the Tank theme tune. The location choices around the parts of the Hawthorns that make West Brom look least like a professional football club. The foreboding overcast weather. But mostly, Anelka's celebrity-forced-to-endure-public-community-service grimace.

Robert Huth - Stoke to Leicester

This move turned out far better for Huth than what can only have been his sarcastic "can't wait to fight for Leicester's survival" comments suggested at the time. 

Carl Jenkinson - Arsenal to West Ham

Carl Jenkinson is pulling the sort of grin-and-bear-it expression that is usually the preserve of hubristic sitcoms characters getting their commupance at the end of an episode.

Leon Clarke - Wolves to Wigan

Emmanuel Frimpong - Arsenal to Barnsley

The Dench salesman and one time cult-hero spoke of his delight at moving from Arsenal to Barnsley with the not-at-all derisory Tweet "How am I gonna draw girls now?"

Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano - Corinthians to West Ham

Julian Faubert - West Ham to Real Madrid