A soccer player's window to earn top money is relatively short and it just takes one big injury to seriously impact their career. Eze is quality and if he can get a double your money contract with a club playing champions league then good luck to him. The issue for Palace as a business model is to plan for this to happen and identify suitable replaces to step up when players are sold. Admittedly easier said than done. I think in hindsight Palace have been guilty of holding on to their top players for too long and not getting the maximum return for some of their signings (Zaha and Guehi spring to mind) The flip side of this is that if these players had been sold at their peak would we have been relegated ( in Zaha's case ) or would we have won the FA cup ( in Guehi's case ) ?
I think in Eze's case they have signed Esse as a future replacement. Whether he will be good enough now or in another season or not at all we will have to see. The problem in Guehi's case is we don't look to have a suitable replacement and i think we are looking for top dollar for a player with only 1 year left on his contract. We really need to persuade him to sign a new contract, accept he will go next year on a free, or drop our asking price.
O'Brien who we sold for a relatively small fee looks like he could have been that replacement but he is now at Everton. It will be interesting to see if and who we might sign in the post Freedman era.
England
