Bristol City surely have £1m transfer regret – Blackburn Rovers went on to make 9x as much | OneFootball

Bristol City sold Sammie Szmodics after just four appearances for the Robins. He went on to win the Championship Golden Boot.

Back in the summer of 2019, Bristol City signed Colchester United’s Sammie Szmodics, who had previously been linked with a move to Premier League side AFC Bournemouth, for an undisclosed fee.

The Robins, who have been able to develop talent from Leagues One and Two and also proven themselves to be excellent at selling players on for a big fee to the top-flight, certainly failed to get the best out of the Republic of Ireland international in this instance.

Szmodics managed just four appearances for City before he departed on loan to Peterborough United in the winter transfer window, eventually joining Peterborough United on a permanent basis just a year after moving to Ashton Gate.

Szmodics went on to prove that the potential he showed at Colchester wasn’t just because he was playing at League Two level, but that he was more than capable of thriving in the Championship.

Szmodics’ spell at Blackburn

After scoring 19 goals in 52 appearances for Posh in League One, a key man as they gained promotion back to the Championship in 2021, he went on to notch six goals in 36 games from attacking midfield for Peterborough in the second-tier.

Upon their relegation, he moved to Blackburn Rovers in the summer of 2022 and, often off the bench or in an attacking midfield role supporting the likes of Ben Brereton Diaz and Sam Gallagher, notched seven goals in 41 games across all competitions in his first season at Ewood Park.

In his second season, though, for a Blackburn side that narrowly avoided relegation to League One on the final day of the campaign, Szmodics notched 27 goals in 44 games, picking up the Championship Golden Boot, as well as winning Blackburn’s Player of the Year award.

Last summer, following his heroics for the Lancastrians, Szmodics earned himself a £9 million move to Premier League new boys Ipswich Town, scoring in his first start for the Tractor Boys as Ipswich took the lead at the Etihad Stadium against then defending champions Manchester City before going on to lose by four goals to one.

He notched a further three times in an injury-hit campaign for the struggling Town, but is expected to form a key part of their attack as they seek a title-winning season in the Championship next season.

Bristol City’s regret

Having brought Szmodics in for a fee of £1 million and then not only missed out on a major profit but also his eventual goals return in the same division, there will be quite a bit of regret at Ashton Gate.

That regret may well even extend into this season because, albeit a difficult thing to forecast over that period of time, City did reach the play-off semi-finals this season, with their top scorer across the regular season being Anis Mehmeti, with just 12 strikes.

Mehmeti, though, has begun to thrive and show his class in Gloucestershire, under the management of former Oxford United boss Liam Manning.

The Albania international had a tricky start to his time at City after moving from Wycombe Wanderers in the January transfer window of 2023, but perhaps the exploits of Szmodics have forced the club into a learning process that has seen them give Mehmeti more game time than Szmodics was afforded.