QPR and West Ham dodged a bullet, Belfodil ends season with zero goals

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Queens Park Rangers and West Ham came very close to signing Algerian striker Ishak Belfodil in January but they may be glad they didn’t.

The Italian press have labelled Inter-owned marksman Ishak Belfodil ‘the king of the flops’ after he ended the season without a single league goal.

Inter bought a 50 percent share in the 22-year-old from Parma last summer for around £5m after protracted negotiations between the two clubs.

Things looked promising when Belfodil found the net in pre-season last July in a 3-1 win over Vicenza, but it was all downhill from there. His only other goal was to come in the Coppa Italia in a win over Serie B side Trapani.

After a toothless first half of the season, Belfodil was tipped to join either West Ham or QPR to try and rediscover his scoring touch, but he instead opted to join Livorno.

But Belfodil was still unable to score and completed an unenviable 1011 Serie A minutes without a goal culminating in Livorno’s relegation to Serie B.

The loss of form in front of goal has also seen Belfodil drop out of Algeria’s national team and miss out on a place at the World Cup.

Belfodil has the dubious honour of topping a table published by Sportmediaset of strikers who played the most minutes without scoring this season in Serie A.

In second place is Torino’s Riccardo Meggiorini tied with Keko of Catania on 939 minutes, followed by former Italian Under-21 star Robert Acquafresca of relegated Bologna, who is on a terrible slump.