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After Matt Derbyshire's surprise loan move to Olympiacos, Eurosport-Yahoo! takes a look at other unusual trips abroad by British players.

Kevin Campbell

"We thought we were buying a goal machine, but we actually got a washing machine".

That's what Trabzonspor chairman Mehmet Ali said of Campbell after his move to Turkey from Nottingham Forest in 1998.

That was funny, but what followed was just out of order - Mehmet called Campbell a "dis-coloured cannibal", which went down like an Armenian flag at an UltraAslan tea-party.

Campbell's sin? Notifying UEFA that he had not been paid his wages. He returned to England with Everton soon afterwards and formed a fearsome partnership with Duncan Ferguson.

Les Ferdinand had better luck in Turkey though, and was so popular during his loan spell at Besiktas that fans sacrificed a goat on the pitch in his honour.

Vinny Samways

The former Tottenham playmaker's career was stalling at Everton so he took the plunge and moved to Las Palmas in Spain.

Samways soon earned a reputation as tough-tackling destroyer, which said more about the flouncy nature of Spanish football than his own physical prowess: he forged a career and a life for himself in Spain - setting up a bar and going on to captain the Canary Islands side.

He even earned a late-career move to Sevilla, where he spent a season before returning to England with Walsall. A year in the Midlands was enough though - he returned to Spain to play lower league football and is likely still there.

Ray Wilkins

Wilkins recently said that his career was extended by a few seasons by moving to Milan - a trick David Beckham would do well to emulate.

'Butch' spent two seasons at the San Siro, where he learnt the Italian language and the good professional habits that saw him play into his forties.

His mastery of Italian has since held him in good stead and he worked for Gianluca Vialli at both Chelsea and Watford, and is now working under Luiz Felipe Scolari back at the Blues.

Paul Gascoigne

'Gazza' is one of the tragedies of English football, a messy, public health warning to the pitfalls of unchecked fame and the folly.

His most high-profile foreign adventure was an injury-ravaged spell at Lazio, but the most unusual of his career moves was the decision to go to China and sign with second division Gansu Tianma as a player-coach.

Sadly his time there ended after only four matches, as he went to the USA to seek treatment for depression and drink problems. The SARS outbreak prevented a return to the Far East and he drifted into lower league obscurity back in England.

Ian Rush

Liverpool's star striker in the Eighties, Rush moved to Juventus in 1987 for an unhappy season in Italy.

Aside from his relatively paltry goal tally - eight in 29 Serie A matches (compared to 30 league goals for Liverpool in the previous season) - Rush's failure was cultural.

He late denied that he ever said it, but he was quoted as complaining that it was "like being in a foreign country" and that "the food all tasted like pasta".

John Aldridge

Liverpool-born Ireland striker John Aldridge was one of the finest finishers of his generation and scored 50 goals in two seasons at Anfield but he was a late starter in professional football and, in 1989 and about to turn 31, Liverpool accepted a £1 million offer from Real Sociedad.

He was a hit in Spain and - crucially - he was the first non-Basque player to turn out for the club. But, like Ian Rush, he failed to settle although for family and not culinary reasons, and returned to Merseyside with Tranmere.

Michael Robinson and Tony Woodcock

Robinson and Woodcock are included in contrast to Rush and Aldridge because of their seamless adaptation to life in Spain and Germany respectively.

Former Preston, Manchester City, Brighton, Liverpool and QPR striker Robinson managed to earn a move to Osasuna in Spain later in his career and after retiring stayed in the country where he became fluent in the language and the host of a popular football TV show.

He has even gone as far as to invent his own Spanish words - such as Balompicamente ('footballistically') - and was a key influence on Steve McManaman when he joined Real Madrid.

Former Nottingham Forest forward Woodcock had two spells at Cologne sandwiched between four years at Arsenal.

He stayed after he quit playing, became a coach and started to speak with a slightly German accent, while he allegedly sported a fabulous, crimped hairdo.

Jonathan Woodgate

In a bizarre counterpoint to the Spanish defender who comes to England, is injured all the time and leaves after three seasons complaining about the women and the weather, Woodgate joined Real Madrid from Newcastle and barely played due to a chronic back problem.

Unusually though, and particularly given his prior reputation for being "daft as a brush" (David O'Leary), Woodgate embraced the Spanish culture by learning the language, growing a beard, hanging out in bars without getting in fights and going to bed very, very late. He left after two seasons but is actually a better player for it.

Darren Huckerby

Huckerby left Norwich last season for the sunnier climes of San Jose, but while the move of a late-career English player to the United States is by no means a rarity, the circumstance of his arrival was quite hilarious.

Described as an "English legend" and "one of the great stars" of the game, Huckerby was a "great goalscorer" who came from the "North-folk team from the North East of England" according to his interviewer on a local TV station. The modest former Coventry, Leeds and Manchester City forward was clearly embarrassed but played along anyway.

Luther Blissett

Urban myth has it that Milan scouts recommended Watford's John Barnes but the club bought team-mate Luther Blissett instead.

True or not, Blissett was a mini-flop for the Rossoneri and was sent back to Hertfordshire soon afterwards.

But he became a mini-legend among Milan fans and Italian hippies in general, and his name has since been used by various artistic and political collectives, with a successful historical novel about the reformation - 'Q' - penned by a group of Bologna-based writers in his name.

The rationale behind this num-de-plume is that, in being signed by mistake, Blissett is a symbol of establishment confusion, the kind of chaos these artists seek to recreate with their humorous pranks and their mad haircuts.

Indeed, while being trialled for rioting in Genoa, a group of Italian anarchists refused to give any name in court other than 'Luther Blissett', while his name is often seen graffitied on walls and lamp-posts

A testament to the man's good humour was his appearance on the Fantasy Football show in 2004, when he was confronted by presenters Frank Skinner and David Baddiel about 'Q' and proceeded to quote from one of the collective's other works in the original Italian, albeit with a North London accent.

Reda Maher / Eurosport