On the one hand, Crystal Palace are entering uncharted territory. Eberechi Eze will represent a record sale, Tottenham Hotspur preparing to pay £55m plus add-ons after days of amicable but intense negotiations between the two clubs.
Palace also face a battle to hold onto Marc Guehi amid interest from Liverpool.
At the same time, it is hard not to feel they have been here before – Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Michael Olise, the endless pursuits of Wilfried Zaha.
The loss of Eze leaves chairman Steve Parish with a burning question – go hard or go steady. The man tasked with overseeing the rebuild will be Matt Hobbs, who has agreed to leave Wolves to move to Selhurst Park as sporting director.
One Molineux source told The i Paper that Hobbs is an “innovative”, “data-driven” and “shrewd” operator. Wolves’ links to Jorge Mendes’ Gestifute agency earned them a reputation for favouring Portuguese signings, but Hobbs actually “likes to explore the South American market – he went to Argentina a few times to look at players”.
What can Palace expect from Hobbs?
He typically targets “technical players who are good at managing the ball in tight areas” and takes inspiration from the Brentford-Brighton model. In other words, those who have worked with him say he drives a hard bargain with a view to selling on at a profit.
It remains to be seen if he works in the same way at Palace. Wolves fans all have a similar complaint – that Hobbs’ and indeed Vitor Pereira’s hands were tied by a constant stream of high-profile exits: his most successful signing in Matheus Cunha, Matheus Nunes, Pedro Neto, Ruben Neves, Max Kilman, Morgan Gibbs-White, Rayan Ait-Nouri.
Crystal Palace’s record sales
- Eberechi Eze, Tottenham – £55m
- Michael Olise, Bayern Munich – £50m
- Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Man Utd – £45m
- Joachim Andersen, Fulham – £30m
- Yannick Bolasie, Everton – £25m
Despite that, Hobbs was behind a number of key deals that kept them up – Craig Dawson, Emmanuel Agbadou, Jorgen Strand Larsen. Palace fans will also remember Wolves signing Sam Johnstone for £10m – it raised eyebrows given he has remained a back-up option to Jose Sa.
Three key transfer targets
The task was certainly not an easy one, however, and that bodes well for Palace as they task him with spending the Eze money. There are ambitious targets linked, not least Tyler Dibling, the teenager having been one of the few bright sparks who lit up Southampton’s woeful last season in the top flight. Dibling carries a huge price tag of at least £40m, with Everton knocked back with an offer of £27m last month.
The early indications are a little more conservative – a loan for Wolves’ Hwang Hee-chan, who has fallen out of favour under Pereira and Palace are among the clubs monitoring Leicester’s Bilal El Khannouss.
That would follow the mould of the summer arrivals so far, goalkeeper Walter Benitez on a free transfer and defender Borna Sosa for £3m.
Palace’s biggest challenges
Unlike many of their rivals in the Premier League’s “middle classes”, Palace are in a healthy position when it comes to PSR. The accounting period takes into account the sales of Joachim Andersen, Olise and Johnstone, and some of their losses can be offset by allowable cost deductions like the academy and the women’s team.
There is “less wiggle room with Uefa’s Squad Cost Ratio” metric, says football finance expert Kieran Maguire, “as wages have been more than 70 per cent of revenue for the last nine seasons”. That will at least be eased by the Eze sale, as Uefa’s calculations are done on a yearly basis.
If Eze and Guehi do leave, it is far from ideal timing – the season is already underway and the FA Cup holders have less than a fortnight of the window left to replace them.
There is European football on offer, but Palace would have liked it to be the Europa League not the Conference League, were it not for their protracted battle with Uefa and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
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Uncertainty also remains over the future of manager Oliver Glasner as he enters the final year of his contract, with no talks held over a renewal as yet.
Palace can at least begin to focus on a new era of recruitment, a wing of the club so long overseen by Dougie Freedman – who left in March – and more recently by Iain Moody (recruitment consultant) and Ben Stevens (assistant sporting director).
Hobbs is certainly no shrinking violet – he received a two-game ban and fine for swearing at officials after the Manchester City game last year – but he is likely to embody a low-risk, cautious but calm approach to transfers. With or without Eze, that may fill Palace with confidence.
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