Given there’s a report saying he’s (Sarr) is injured, which he could well be, and we’ve heard nothing to suggest otherwise, I think people are jumping the gun a bit. He doesn’t strike me as the sort of player who’d simply go on strike to force a move.
Mateta’s in the final year of his deal. We had an opportunity there, just as we did with Guehi. People complained that we didn’t take the money for Guehi, but equally he could have seen out his contract and left for nothing.
At the end of the day, these players are under contract for a set period on wages agreed at the time. If they start refusing to train or play halfway through it to force a move, then yes, I think that’s pretty poor. But it works both ways. The club is only entitled to their services for the period they’ve signed for.
Calling either of these two “scum” is taking it far too far. Your argument is they lack loyalty, yet you’ve gone out on an unconfirmed situation and labelled them “greedy scum”. I suspect the irony may be lost though.
The simple fact is that Palace are going to be a feeder club to bigger clubs to some extent. Like it or not, that’s the reality. Were Olise and Eze scum because they left Reading and QPR respectively to come to us? No, obviously not. They saw the chance to progress their careers.
Personally, I don’t see Sarr suddenly going on strike over this. I agree modern players and agents can have far too much power, but in the case of these two they’ve done their jobs admirably for us. Until there’s actually some evidence they’ve behaved badly, I think it’s pretty unfair to start throwing labels like that around.