We often say that a big transfer is never going to happen until a club find a suitable replacement for their outgoing star, so this is a fairly big development in Wilfried Zaha’s future.
The Crystal Palace star looks like he’s capable of playing at a higher level, but if that doesn’t happen soon then he could miss his chance and be stuck with Palace for the rest of his career.
Of course that’s not a disaster, but he’ll be unlikely to achieve anything meaningful, so a recent report from Sky Sports does sound like a move could be possible.
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They suggest that Palace have now identified four possible replacements – Ryan Fraser, Said Benrahma, Ollie Watkins and Ebere Eze – all good players and you could even see them signing two of them to plug the gap.
This starts to get interesting from an Arsenal point of view, as The Guardian have confirmed again that Arsenal have been interested in the Ivorian for years and Mikel Arteta is a big fan too.
The reason Zaha didn’t leave last summer was the enormous price tag, and that could be the same again here after Sky claimed Palace would be looking for around £80m to let him go.
It’s almost impossible to see a way that Arsenal could meet those demands so some kind of compromise will need to be found, and it’s possible that Zaha will need to start acting up to force his way out too.