The £62m from player sales Crystal Palace could make to boost summer transfer war chest

One way or another, like a gutsy prospector trawling Texas at the turn of the 20th century, Wilf Zaha looks as if he is going to be lured away from Crystal Palace by the promises of oil this summer. In one corner, slogging it out for his signature, we have the Saudis and a desperately vehement brand of sports-scrubbing that would put Lady Macbeth to shame. In the other, we have the Qataris and their PSG project, eagerly hunting, as they are, for a Lionel Messi replacement after he swanned off into the neon sunset to race speedboats in pastel-coloured blazers with rolled up sleeves - or whatever it is they do these days on the shores of Miami.

Wherever he ends up, however, and whichever questionable Middle Eastern paymaster he chooses to align himself with, the big losers here are going to be Palace. Not only will they be bidding farewell to their talismanic poster boy and attacking svengali, but they will receive absolutely nothing in compensation for the pleasure. There are rough deals, and then there’s this.

Zaha’s contract at Selhurst Park is set to expire in the coming weeks, and with no indication that an extension is in the offing, the expectation is that he will leave his boyhood club as a free agent. At least the first time he did it - when he joined Manchester United all those years ago - he had the decency to fetch £10 million or so.

Now Palace find themselves in the rotten position of having to recruit a Zaha replacement while having no Zaha money to do it with. They have squeezed and squeezed the very last drops of vigour from the forward’s time at the club, but ultimately it has to be asked, at what cost?

Transfer funds, you would imagine, will have to be sourced from elsewhere, and that, in turn, could lead to other, more lucrative departures this summer. The two names that immediately jump from the page in that regard are Marc Guehi and Michael Olise. Both have used their time in south London to establish themselves as two of the Premier League’s most promising talents, and both, consequently, have been linked with high profile moves to clubs that soundly dwarf the Eagles by most metrics. The former has reportedly been valued at around £50 million by Palace, while his French teammate is conservatively valued at around £23 million by stats boffins Transfermarkt.

The prospect of losing both Zaha and Olise could be too much to bear in one window, however, and as such, if Palace are to begrudgingly sell one of their top stars before the deadline passes, Guehi could be the one to go. Emphasis on the ‘could’.

But while, hypothetically speaking, he would be the most expensive player to depart Selhurst Park, he almost certainly wouldn’t be the only one. Take, for instance, Jairo Riedewald. This season, he played just 57 minutes of top flight football, and a further 12 in the Carabao Cup. There is no way that a 26-year-old in the prime of his career can be remotely satisfied with such limited opportunities. If his time with Palace was to come to an end this summer, nobody would so much as blink twice. He might not fetch a lot, but his market value is believed to be around £3.5 million.

And then there is the striking situation. Palace currently have three out-and-out centre forwards on their books; Jordan Ayew, Odsonne Edouard, and Jean-Philippe Mateta. Between them, they scored just 13 goals across all competitions this term, with Edouard doing the majority of the lifting by notching seven alone.

As things stand, its hard to envisage the Frenchman leaving, while Ayew only penned a new deal with Palace back in March. But Mateta must surely be a player who the Eagles would be open to selling. Ten goals in 67 appearances is the kind of return that strays frighteningly close to dud territory, and his contribution has been so flimsy that few would miss his presence. A fee of around £8 million would still represent a loss for Palace, but it would also help them recoup most of what they paid for him back in January of last year.

And so, with three sales of varied reluctance, the Eagles could raise in excess of £60 million this summer. Would it make up for the loss of a player as influential as Zaha? In truth, it would depend entirely on how well it was spent. At the very least, it should be enough to soften the blow.