Cristiano Ronaldo, Raheem Sterling, Harry Kane and the Premier League's most infamous transfer strops and strikes as Matheus Nunes refuses to train for Wolves

Van Hooijdonk helped Nottingham Forest gain promotion to the Premier League with a stunning 1997-98 season that included 34 goals scored.

He often clashed with manager Dave Bassett, though, and eventually attempted to engineer a move away from the City Ground. The manager refused to let him go, despite Newcastle reportedly offering £7 million ($8.5m).

When Van Hooijdonk returned from World Cup duty in 1998, he believed the club was not well-positioned to start the new season.

The striker asked for a transfer and cited an agreement that allowed him to move at the end of the season should he wish. The owners refused, so Van Hooijdonk went on strike.

The protest lasted till November, when he reluctantly agreed to return. He scored just six goals that season and Forest ended up relegated. He eventually moved to the Netherlands, joining Vitesse for £3.5m ($4.2m).

This is perhaps the craziest story on our list. Gallas left Chelsea to join Arsenal in 2006, but it wasn't an amicable split.

After the deal had been completed, Blues boss Jose Mourinho backed the release of a club statement that claimed Gallas threatened to score an own goal and get himself sent off if he were forced to play for the club again. It was also suggested that he had refused to play in the FA Cup semi-final against Liverpool the previous season.

Chelsea also stated that despite not wanting to let Gallas leave, they reluctantly agreed in order to help secure the services of Arsenal left-back Ashley Cole.

Gallas was enraged by Chelsea's claims and issued a statement of his own in which he declared: "I certainly never said I'd try and score an own goal if I ever played for Chelsea again."

Regardless of whether the most damning accusations were accurate, Gallas did sit out a pre-season tour leading up to his Blues exit.

Did Sir Alex Ferguson deliberately unsettle Berbatov in the summer of 2008? Or were quotes attributed to the Scot simply the work of a mischievous media? Whatever the truth, the Tottenham striker clearly had his head turned by the news that Manchester United wanted to sign him.

Spurs filed a complaint with the Premier League, which Ferguson labelled "embarrassing", insisting that he had not told any newspaper that he expected to have Berbatov on board for the 2008-09 campaign.

By that stage, though, Berbatov was desperate to move to Old Trafford and he was left out of Tottenham's early-season clashes with Sunderland and Chelsea.

The Bulgarian was eventually allowed to leave by Spurs' seething chairman, Daniel Levy, but even Ferguson had been emotionally scared by the whole sorry episode, later writing that the transfer saga had been "more painful than my hip operation".

Mascherano was a hugely popular player at Liverpool, adored for the aggression and commitment he displayed each and every time he set foot on the pitch. The fans were bitterly disappointed, then, when he refused to play a game against Manchester City on August 23, 2010.

The problem was that Barcelona had made a bid for Mascherano and he was desperate to leave. He'd made his intentions known immediately after returning to Merseyside following the World Cup and he was under the impression that the club would let him leave if they received a reasonable offer.

Liverpool, though, did not want to give up one of the best midfielders in the world at the time, so Mascherano went AWOL for the trip to City.

He has since apologised to the fans for his actions but still maintains that he had no other choice.

"I was quite angry that they weren’t keeping their word," he later told FourFourTwo. "Refusing to play at City was the way I found to show my annoyance.

"I’d told the club I wanted to leave for family reasons, so I was very upset to have to act the way I did. There was no other option – otherwise, Liverpool wouldn’t keep their promise."

Despite a famously warm welcome, Carlos Tevez never completely settled in the blue half of Manchester, after making the move from United to City in 2009.

The first issue arrived in December 2010 when, after failing to secure an improved contract, he handed in a written transfer request. It was withdrawn by the end of the month but that didn't signal the end of his issues at City.

Tevez and manager Roberto Mancini had a huge falling-out during a Champions League clash with Bayern Munich at the Allianz Arena in September 2011. With the visitors 2-0 down, Tevez allegedly refused to come on as a substitute. Mancini was furious and the Argentine forward was subsequently suspended for two weeks by the club.

He then went on strike until February of the following year. City tried to sell him during the January transfer window but to no avail. During the impasse, Tevez was even pictured enjoying a round of golf.

Tevez belatedly apologised for his actions and was welcomed back into the first-team squad by Mancini, who was keen to draw a line under the whole affair.

Tevez responded to pundits questioning his commitment by celebrating with a golf swing after scoring a hat-trick against Norwich on April 14, 2012.

Modric orchestrated two explosive sagas in quick succession as he tried to force a move away from Tottenham.

In 2011, Chelsea had two bids for the Croatian rejected by Spurs, much to Modric's frustration. He claimed to have had a "gentleman's agreement" in place with chairman Daniel Levy to sell him to a "bigger club".

Modric then effectively went on strike and missed Tottenham's Premier League opener, a 3-0 loss to Manchester United. He eventually ended up staying in north London, but not for much longer.

The following summer, Real Madrid made a move for Modric. The midfielder refused to turn up for training, and then didn't travel with the Spurs squad on their pre-season tour of the United States.

He was fined two weeks wages as he continued to push for a transfer. Eventually, a fee was agreed and Modric left for the Santiago Bernabeu, where he would become a Ballon d'Or winner.

Sterling looked poised to become a Liverpool legend. Instead, he became a target for the Anfield boo boys after quitting the club in acrimonious circumstances.

After breaking into the first team under Brendan Rodgers and quickly becoming a first-team regular, he was offered a new contract in 2015. However, the winger then gave an unsanctioned interview to the BBC in which he revealed that he had no intention of extending a deal that still had two years to run.

Rodgers was enraged, blaming Sterling's agent, Aidy Ward, for leading his client astray. Ward responded in an interview with the London Evening Standard, saying "I don't care about the PR of the club and the club situation... He is definitely not signing. He's not signing for £700,000, £800,000 or £900,000 a week."

Manchester City made a bid for Sterling that summer but Liverpool rejected their first couple of offers. They eventually accepted a £50m ($60m) bid, but only after Sterling had refused to travel on the club's pre-season tour before then missing two days of training through 'illness', sparking widespread criticism from a host of Liverpool legends, including former captain Steven Gerrard.

"I'm not happy with all that carry-on," the midfielder said. "You don't have to throw in illness, or refuse to go on tour. It's very difficult for me to sit here and support him."

Coutinho eventually got his dream move to Barcelona, but he made life a bit of a nightmare for Liverpool in the process. In the summer of 2017, Barca reportedly tabled three bids for the Brazilian, all of which were rejected by the Reds.

So, Coutinho reportedly handed in a transfer request before then suffering a back injury that the Selecao's doctor claimed was caused by stress, resulting in the attacking midfielder missing the start of the season.

Coutinho eventually returned to the fold but, when January rolled around, manager Jurgen Klopp effectively admitted that the former Inter man was no longer will to play for the club.

The Brazilian moved to Camp Nou for approximately £140m ($170) – a colossal sum that effectively funded a new era of success for Liverpool by paying for the acquisitions of Alisson and Virgil van Dijk.

In summer 2021, Kane made an ultimately unsuccessful play to leave Tottenham for Manchester City.

The saga started when he spoke to Gary Neville on his show 'The Overlap' and revealed that he was desperate to win trophies.

Then, after going on holiday to the US after Euro 2020, Kane failed to return in time for pre-season training. He was accused of effectively going on strike and his professionalism was called into question.

Kane responded with an Instagram post on August 6, defending his no-show, but he still sat out the first two games of the season, the first of which was a 1-0 win over City that Spurs fans celebrated wildly.

He then issued a second statement on social media, some 20 days after his first, committing his services to Tottenham after returning to action in a win over Wolves at the end of August.

He was again linked with a move away from north London the following summer, before finally exiting Spurs for Bayern Munich earlier this month.

Ronaldo and Erik ten Hag were always going to be a difficult match - and so it proved during the legendary forward short-lived spell under the Dutchman at Old Trafford. A storm was already brewing before the pair had even met, with Ronaldo pushing hard to leave Manchester United after they failed to secure Champions League qualification during his comeback 2021-22 season.

That move away never materialised and Ronaldo's decision to leave a pre-season friendly against Rayo Vallecano early did little to repair his relationship with the United faithful. Things got even worse during a Premier League defeat to Tottenham in October, with the forward refusing to come on as a late substitute and subsequently storming down the tunnel.

Any hope of reigniting his second stint at United was then decisively extinguished in November when Ronaldo agreed to a tell-all interview with Piers Morgan. During the sit-down, he criticised Ten Hag, the Glazer family and even former team-mate Wayne Rooney. Unsurprisingly, he was released not long after and soon signed for Al-Nassr in the Saudi Pro League.