We gave Crystal Palace £65m to replace Marc Guehi - they did it with two new signings

The story of Crystal Palace’s summer transfer window largely revolved around Marc Guehi’s future at Selhurst Park.

After playing an integral role in helping England reach the final of Euro 2024, there was expected to be widespread interest in the former Chelsea centre-back. Newcastle United proved to be the leading contenders to sign Guehi and a painstaking period of negotiations followed as the Magpies reportedly made four unsuccessful offers to land the Eagles star. Annoyingly for all parties involved, the saga - and it was officially upgraded to a saga - was played out in public as the media drained every column inch possible before the Magpies ended their efforts to conclude a deal in the final hours of the window.

Although the January transfer window does not open for another two months, Guehi’s future continues to attract headlines with recent reports suggesting Liverpool and Manchester United are ready to join Newcastle in the race to try and persuade Palace into a deal for the defender. We fired up Football Manager 2024, used the editor to set the Palace squad at its present state and transferred Guehi to Liverpool in £65m deal during the opening days of next summer’s transfer window before allowing the world’s most popular managerial simulation to predict how the Eagles would move to replace the England defender.

Who did Crystal Palace sign to replace Guehi?

Palace wasted very little time in making their first move to replace Guehi as they raided London rivals West Ham United with a £35m move for Max Kilman. The Eagles ensured the former Wolves captain’s stay at the London Stadium was limited to just one season after he was persuaded to become their first replacement for the departed Guehi. However, with £30m still burning a hole in Oliver Glasner’s pocket, another centre-back was quickly targeted and after making unsuccessful bids for the likes of Nottingham Forest’s Nikola Milenkovic, Brentford’s Ethan Pinnock and Tottenham Hotspur’s Radu Dragusin, a successful move was finally completed within the final hours of the transfer window.

By the time Glasner has completed that £20m deal for Leicester City defender Wout Faes, Palace had won one and lost three of their opening four games of the season and were sat just outside of the Premier League relegation zone. Although Kilman firmly established himself alongside Maxence Lacroix at the heart of the Palace defence, Faes’ introduction to life at Selhurst Park proved to be somewhat frustrating as he was forced to play a backup role for large parts of the first half of the season.

That is not to suggest he did not feature - but the Belgian only started games when Glasner opted to switch to three centre-backs or in cup competitions and interest in the Carabao Cup came to a close after a 3-2 third round defeat at Championship side Middlesbrough.

However, there were better fortunes for Faes after the festive period as the former Foxes star took full advantage of a torn hamstring suffered by Lacroix in an FA Cup fourth round home loss against Everton. That ruled the Wolfsburg man out of action for the following three months and allowed Faes to forge a strong partnership with Kilman that helped the Eagles climb away from the relegation zone and into the the relative safety of mid-table.

An unbeaten run of seven games that included four clean sheets and wins at Manchester United and at home to Newcastle helped Glasner’s men end the season in thirteenth place and gave the Palace manager something to think about when he selects his preferred centre-back partnership for the following season.