Ex-Liverpool player was voted flop of the season by fellow professionals in brutal anonymous poll

A former Premier League midfielder was cruelly branded 'disappointment of the year' in an anonymous poll of his fellow professionals.

Liverpool signed hotly tipped Guinea international Naby Keita from RB Leipzig in 2018 but he found it difficult to make an impact at Anfield thanks in part to a succession of injuries that badly hampered his progress.

Keita was only 23 when he joined the Reds and was out of action on a regular basis in a key period of his career, having burst onto the scene as a key part of the best team in the short history Red Bull Salzburg and impressing in a Leipzig shirt during his first spell in the Bundesliga in Germany.

The midfielder, now 30, left Liverpool for Werder Bremen in the summer of 2023, ending a frustrating spell in England but starting another back in the German top division.

Keita played only 109 minutes across five league games for Werder in his first season at the club, an extremely poor return for his significant wages after signing on a free transfer two years ago.

To add insult to injury in the most literal way possible, an annual poll of Bundesliga players by the leading German sports magazine Kicker voted him the league's disappointment of the season by a landslide.

26 percent of the players polled voted for Keita, who "also created bad headlines when the club accused him of refusing to play against champions Bayer Leverkusen in April, apparently angry that he was named on the bench" according to Foot Mundo.

The former Liverpool midfielder "refuted those allegations but was suspended for the remainder of the season" and his subsequent move away from Bremen and Germany was not a surprising development.

Ex-Liverpool midfielder Naby Keita. (Image: Getty)

After a January loan switch, Keita is playing temporarily for Hungarian league leaders Ferencvaros.

The defending champions reportedly have an option to buy Keita at the end of the season as part of the loan agreement.

Keita has appeared in seven league games for the Budapest club, starting five, but remains without a goal or assist since scoring Liverpool's winning goal against Newcastle United in the Premier League three years ago.