HarvSFC

Alexander Buttner and Quincy Promes - Two bullets dodged. Inigo Calderon during the League One days.

Palace's pre-season tour squad. No Johnstone, Tomkins, Guehi, Olise, Eze, Hughes, Doucoure, Schlupp, McArthur, Zaha or Benteke. One can only assume they have a few unvaccinated players. Hopefully disrupts their start.

You’d imagine/hope that with the signing of Lavia that we won’t be looking for another midfielder when the only name in that position being linked is Harry Winks. A modern day Darron Gibson/Tom Cleverley/Jay Spearing whose stock will dramatically fall once out of a big six club.

Off the top of my head: Carrillo - Southampton £20m Wesley - Aston Villa £22m Haller - West Ham £45m - Ajax £22m (An unwanted player at this time) Dan James - Leeds £25m Joelinton - Newcastle £40m Rodrigo - Leeds £27m Chris Wood - Newcastle £25m Richarlison - Tottenham £60m (Scores a handful more a season than Adams) Ollie Watkins - Aston Villa £33m Christian Benteke - Crystal Palace £32m Neal Maupay - Brighton £20m Moise Kean - Everton £27m Slimani - Leicester £28m Daka - Leicester £23m Rhian Brewster - Sheffield United £23m Dominic Solanke - Bournemouth £19m Ollie McBurnie - Sheffield United £20m Fabio Silva - Wolves £35m And £20m is supposed to be a good price for Adams... 👍

Selling Adams would cause too much turnover in the striker positions, in the same way that we've kept Elyounoussi because we can't let all the 10s, barring S. Armstrong go at once. We already need to replace Broja and Long with the 5 subs rule, needing to replace Adams too would be a big ask for any scouting department. Plus, with the recent links to Dembele, I think Adams and Dembele would be a pretty good partnership. Dembele's all round game isn't there, but he is a finisher, a poacher. Adams' finishing isn't all there, but he is a supplier and can play others' into the positions that he misses from. Plus £20m... Steven Bergwijn went to Ajax for £28m and he was an average squad player in his three years at Tottenham.

With the first team, can see him in the latest training video.

Which would make sense, as we ourselves picked him up on the cheap as he had a low release clause at Vallodid, it's what his negotiators look for. I said in the Aribo thread, that these players who we're picking up on the cheap because of their contract situations will do the same here, so it's another element of selling the player at the right time and getting the best price.

From this summer, if Romano, or Ornstein say we're in for a player, we're in for that player. Then you have the local journos who can feed us with the not so headline news, but still very welcomed such as yesterday's example of shutting down the ever reliable Football Insider after 20 minutes of them claiming Armstrong was available on loan. Blackmore's included amongst the local group, while also being able to tell us when an announcement is going to happen. Blackmore doesn't say who we're targeting specifically, like Romano, or Ornstein do, but he's the trusted source on the finer details and what is happening at the club. Then you have Alex Crook...

Not a ground breaking observation, but from watching today's training video, KWP is playing left-back in the training match, while Valery is playing right-back. I suspect it will Kabore and Livramento as our right-backs for next season and then KWP and Perraud for the left-back spot. Small to go out on loan and Valery to leave in whatever capacity will take him away. Of course KWP will also play the occasional game at right-back while Livramento is out. Will be interesting to see what the long-term plan is for Kabore. I'm sure neither himself or Livramento will want to play backup to the other, if the possibility to sign Kabore on a permanent deal materialises and if he impresses. (I actually prefer KWP as a right-back, although he isn't much of a downgrade as a left-back either).

I’ve never labelled Bazunu as a great signing, because he isn’t. Great signings are established internationals at the peak of their career. Players we don’t sign. Bazunu is an exciting signing because he’s relatively unknown, rated by Ireland, Man City and Portsmouth fans (and staff). Williams would be an underwhelming signing at £17m, because he’s already answered all the questions Bazunu’s going to face next season. If we could pick up Williams in the same way we did Bertrand, that would be good, but at £17m, that’s too big an outlay for what you’re getting. Man City offered Bazunu a new contract and wanted to keep him, put a buyback clause on him. Whereas Liverpool wanted Williams to leave, as they had already replaced him with the Scottish full-back.

The difference being is that Williams has proven he isn’t a £17m player, especially in a weaker team as Wales are, where he is the weak defensively. It does feel like bad value when you consider we signed both KWP and Livramento for the cost of Williams. However, looking at our transfers, I do wonder if we would have been in for both Brewster and Solanke if we had this model at the time of them both becoming available. Both were highly rated youngsters, as ours are this summer. Brewster came off a good Championship season and Solanke was scoring for fun in the England youth setup. Both cost £20m and both were shockingly bad and out of depth in their first seasons. Brewster still is, while Solanke has only done it at Championship level. So, there isn’t an exact science and that’s the gamble. It’s possible ours could turn out the same way, but it is also high risk, and hopefully high reward.

Puts to bed those ridiculous JWP to West Ham rumours.

This is good ownership. Identifying players and going out and getting them early, giving them as much of a pre-season as we can. This time last summer we had signed just Perraud and Walcott on a permanent, waiting another 21 days for Ollie Lancashire, 22 days for Dynel Simeu and 27 days for our next first team signing, Tino Livramento.

Ross Wilson doesn’t get the quoted price shocker, looks like we’re paying just over half initially of the £10m they wanted. (His release clause).

If it was Lavia to replace Romeu, which could still happen given the contract situation, then the deal wouldn't look as good. However, if it's JWP + Romeu + Lavia, then it looks a lot better. It's a position we need better depth in, which we simply haven't had for the last couple of years. Last season, Romeu had a period where he looked the complete defensive midfielder and one of the better ones in the division. His form then dropped off a cliff, coinciding with our overall drop, for whatever reason, whether it was fatigue, or whatever, we simply couldn't take him out of the team, as we were even more overrun without him, than we did with him in his poor form. The same happened the season before, after his injury at Leeds, the team collapsed. If we can now bring Romeu out of the team, rest him and not have that worry that our midfield will be overrun and the defence won't be protected without him, then this signing could be as important as the goalkeeper, centre-back, number 10 and striker position this summer. Our team has been neglected for years now with no investments and we've got plenty of holes to fill. This is one of them and a young player with plenty of room to grow and learn fits the role perfectly. He'll hopefully be what we hoped Jankewitz could be.

Can draw some comparison. Aribo is prone to over hitting one of his skills and looking as though he’s not in total control, which he can get away with in Scotland, whether he can get away with it in the Premier League where space and time aren’t given is going to be the question. Whereas, Djenepo doesn’t know what he’s doing with his feet himself. Djenepo also misses large parts of seasons, whereas I believe Aribo played the most football of any professional footballer last season, so he’ll be as reliable as JWP. But, as I said yesterday, £10m is a good price and worth taking the gamble. Have to watch out for that contract, though with him running down both his Charlton and Rangers contracts.

I knew Odsonne Edouard would find it a lot more difficult in the Premier League and said as much last summer when we were linked with him and Armstrong to replace Ings. I did say I would prefer Armstrong at the time, but a year later and neither would have been much better than the other. Aribo's a bit more of a difficult one. He has the skills, but I don't think he's always in control and given the lack of time and space in the Premier League, those skills may not come off as much down here as they do in Scotland. He's not particularly pacey either and isn't a playmaker like Tadic. But, at £10m, that's a fair price these days and may be a gamble worth taking. Although, I would rather see an electric forward like Mane/Pre-injury Rodriguez come in.

Gone to work with Wade Elliott, who is now the manager of Cheltenham.

Gareth Bale's sell on clause.

Musiala was here for a year too, good job he didn't amount to anything, really. Player trading at youth level, especially with Chelsea and Man City hoovering up all the talent is a lot more common than when we were bringing through the likes of Bridge, Walcott, Bale, Lallana, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Shaw and JWP, who had been in the setup for years, unfortunately.

Both are more defensive midfielders, than attacking. Downes played 4 matches at centre-back for Swansea last season, according to Transfermarkt. From clips Lavia looks to be the more physical, Romeu/Wanyama type, while Downes looks to be the more technical JWP/Schneiderlin type. Who knows how interested we actually were in Downes, as unlike with Lavia there hasn't been any notable reported movements from us made towards him, just our name alongside many other Premier League clubs linked and now he's going to Palace shortly after, so could be that it was simply a use of the media to speed that deal up so that Swansea could then bring in Allen, or if it was a case of it being between Lavia or Downes for us. 🤷‍♂️

"The manager wants a small squad." No manager in football wants a small squad, leaving them with a lack of options and having to turn to the likes of N'Lundulu, Ramsay and Tyreke Johnson at Premier League level.

He has only got two stars, so probably not suitable.

Imagine if McCarthy, or Forster had conceded these two goals at Premier League level...

JWP and Salisu the two first team players in the kit launch. That means they’re staying, right?