Middlesbrough's £2.6m deal for South American winger just never worked out: View | OneFootball

Highlights

The summer of 2015 was certainly a busy one in terms of incoming transfer window business for Middlesbrough.

During the 2014/15 season, the club had agonisingly missed out on promotion to the Premier League after being beaten 2-0 by Norwich City in the Championship play-off final.

That ensured that the club were looking to go one better in the 2015/16 campaign, prompting an eventful summer as they looked to put together a squad capable of doing that.

In total, ten players were added to the first-team squad at The Riverside Stadium, either permanently or on loan.

As the window closed, the last of those ten to complete their move to Middlesbrough was Carlos De Pena.

Boro paid a significant fee for Carlos De Pena

On the final day of the 2015 summer transfer window, the club announced they had completed the signing of De Pena.

The winger arrived from Nacional in his native Uruguay, where he had previously spent his entire senior career.

It was reported that Middlesbrough paid a £2.6million fee for the signing of the then 23-year-old, following a late race against time to get the deal done.

De Pena signed a three-year contract at The Riverside Stadium, but in the end, the effort and finances put into getting the deal done, ultimately appear not to have been worth it.

Carlos De Pena never made an impact for Middlesbrough

Having completed his move to the Riverside Stadium, De Pena failed to ever really make much of an impression in England.

Although Middlesbrough would indeed win promotion back to the Premier League during the winger's debut campaign with the club, his influence on that was highly limited.

Throughout the 2015/16 campaign, De Pena managed just six Championship appearances for the club.

Only three of those were as a starter, and he never completed a full 90 minutes over the course of the campaign, seemingly struggling to settle in England.

Indeed, De Pena failed to score or provide any assists for Middlesbrough in the Championship during that promotion winning campaign, demonstrating the challenge he faced to make an impression.

The following campaign proved even more frustrating for the winger, as Boro returned to the Premier League for the 2016/17 season.

During that particular season, De Pena failed to make a single competitive appearance for the club, before being loaned to Spanish side Real Oviedo in the January transfer window.

Once that loan had come to an end in the summer of 2017, De Pena's time back at Middlesbrough proved to be brief.

In that same transfer window, it was announced that the winger's contract at The Riverside Stadium had been terminated by mutual consent, with a year still remaining on his deal.

The fact that Boro elected to let him go for free, when there was still a chance they could have recouped some sort of fee for him, does feel like a somewhat damning reflection on his time with the club.

In doing so, it also ensured that Middlesbrough were unable to get any return on their investment in De Pena, either on or off the pitch.