Up to around £50m maybe but not more than that. Only would pay that much because he will also help our homegrown numbers which I'm sure we are a bit short on.

I'm not gonna say I've seen loads of him but he does seem to have something about him, he carries that Palace attack and thrives at doing it. I think he needs to move to a bigger club and reach a higher level. He's exactly the type of player we have missed out wide, someone who is aggressive, quick and able to change the game from out wide. We've got absolutely nothing from our wide areas, so he is the type of player we need.

Anzac wrote:

Arsenal will have to pay Crystal Palace £100m to sign Ivory Coast forward Wilfried Zaha, 26, this summer. (Mail on Sunday)
lol

The logic these guys come up with is actually so daft you want to cry. United have 25% sell-on clause and Palace want to make 70m pounds, so we will have to pay 100m pounds. For a player who is worth 50m pounds at a push. Kiss my big ole black ass.

He'll hand in a transfer request.

They just sold Wan Bissaka for £50m and all summer had heard they wouldn't take less than £65m. The press are either fed these figures or just pull a number out of thin air.

With the sell on clause Man Utd have from Palace's point of view they'd probably want players as part of the deal. Rumour has it a lot of the hold up on the Wan Bissaka deal was they wanted Man Utd to reduce or remove their clause. So selling him is definitely on their mind.

Deal is unlikely though, maybe we can entice them with a loan and option to buy

JazzG wrote:

Up to around £50m maybe but not more than that. Only would pay that much because he will also help our homegrown numbers which I'm sure we are a bit short on.

I'm not gonna say I've seen loads of him but he does seem to have something about him, he carries that Palace attack and thrives at doing it. I think he needs to move to a bigger club and reach a higher level. He's exactly the type of player we have missed out wide, someone who is aggressive, quick and able to change the game from out wide. We've got absolutely nothing from our wide areas, so he is the type of player we need.

Agreed that we need someone like him, but I don't think his end product is good enough for a top6.
He had his best season just gone with 10 goals and 5 assists for 34 games & 3000+ minutes.
Mahrez had 7 goals and 4 assists for 14 games & 1300+ minutes.

Re our HG requirements - Bellerin, Iwobi, Chambers, Holding, Jenkins, AM-N, ES-R, Nelson, Willock = we don't need him for that.

If Zaha pleads with them I'm sure they will let him leave on a reasonable fee. Their relationship is a bit special, from how he gone back to help them fight off relegation to signing new deals to stay. Pretty certain Palace will do him a favour

As special as mahrez’ relationship with Leicester?

Green is the name of the game. Put up or shut up, and sit down.

Anzac wrote:

JazzG wrote:

Up to around £50m maybe but not more than that. Only would pay that much because he will also help our homegrown numbers which I'm sure we are a bit short on.

I'm not gonna say I've seen loads of him but he does seem to have something about him, he carries that Palace attack and thrives at doing it. I think he needs to move to a bigger club and reach a higher level. He's exactly the type of player we have missed out wide, someone who is aggressive, quick and able to change the game from out wide. We've got absolutely nothing from our wide areas, so he is the type of player we need.

Agreed that we need someone like him, but I don't think his end product is good enough for a top6.
He had his best season just gone with 10 goals and 5 assists for 34 games & 3000+ minutes.
Mahrez had 7 goals and 4 assists for 14 games & 1300+ minutes.

Re our HG requirements - Bellerin, Iwobi, Chambers, Holding, Jenkins, AM-N, ES-R, Nelson, Willock = we don't need him for that.

We can only have a maximum of 17 non-HG players in our 25-man squad. This doesn’t include u21s (e.g. players born on or after 1st January 1998). This includes the likes of ESR, Nelson and Willock. We can have as many as we want of those with no effect on the number of other players in our 25 man squad.

Of the remaining HG players, that leaves us with Bellerin, Iwobi, Holding and AMN as those with some claim to being a first team regular. Then you have the likes of Jenkinson that we can't move on, Chambers who we may move on and a couple others who will not be expected to be part of the first team plans for next season. Thay leaves us with 4/potentially 6 HG players next season depending on our sales/purchases.

Now, our main squad has the following non HG players:

Leno
Ospina
Sok
Kos
Mustafi (please no)
Nacho
Mav
Kola
Xhaka
Torreira
Elneny (Will hopefully leave)
Mkhi (stuck here)
Ozil (stuck here)
Auba
Laca

Unless we can shift a number if these players, we'll only be able to buy 2 more non HG players before needing to sell first.

The benefit of HG is if the HG player us good enough it effectively gives us one extra non HG space as that player can be counted as one of the 8 HG spots rather than the 17 non HG spots.

Ospina has gone Napoli, I thought?

Of the signings that look the most likely:

Saliba, if we sign him and then don't loan him, wouldn't need registering because of his age. Tierney, however, would. SFA trained players do not count as homegrown.

Big Willie wrote:

Anzac wrote:

Agreed that we need someone like him, but I don't think his end product is good enough for a top6.
He had his best season just gone with 10 goals and 5 assists for 34 games & 3000+ minutes.
Mahrez had 7 goals and 4 assists for 14 games & 1300+ minutes.

Re our HG requirements - Bellerin, Iwobi, Chambers, Holding, Jenkins, AM-N, ES-R, Nelson, Willock = we don't need him for that.

We can only have a maximum of 17 non-HG players in our 25-man squad. This doesn’t include u21s (e.g. players born on or after 1st January 1998). This includes the likes of ESR, Nelson and Willock. We can have as many as we want of those with no effect on the number of other players in our 25 man squad.

Of the remaining HG players, that leaves us with Bellerin, Iwobi, Holding and AMN as those with some claim to being a first team regular. Then you have the likes of Jenkinson that we can't move on, Chambers who we may move on and a couple others who will not be expected to be part of the first team plans for next season. Thay leaves us with 4/potentially 6 HG players next season depending on our sales/purchases.

Now, our main squad has the following non HG players:

Leno
Ospina
Sok
Kos
Mustafi (please no)
Nacho
Mav
Kola
Xhaka
Torreira
Elneny (Will hopefully leave)
Mkhi (stuck here)
Ozil (stuck here)
Auba
Laca

Unless we can shift a number if these players, we'll only be able to buy 2 more non HG players before needing to sell first.

The benefit of HG is if the HG player us good enough it effectively gives us one extra non HG space as that player can be counted as one of the 8 HG spots rather than the 17 non HG spots.

I don't think Zaha is good enough to be targeted just because he is HG, let alone for any price over 30m re his age and lack of end product.  He has the highest rates for being dispossessed and poor 1st touch in offence per game in the PL 
  
We don't need the HG players to be 1st team quality or even part of the match day squad, and whilst we do not need to register players u21 we can do so if we want to make up the numbers.  AW hardly used a bona fide senior squad with 25 players aged 21 and over once the internal youth development project took over from season 2008-09, and a decade later we are almost dead in the water outside top4.

Point is that if we want to be really serious about the rebuild AND regain top4/CL then it simply depends on out appetite to do so.  
By this I mean we can go hard and big this summer and spend all our cash reserves and blow FFP out of the water.  
Firstly because the domestic wages increase % is due to finish at the end of the month and there has been no replacement restriction put forward.  Secondly FFP is aggregated over a 3 season window before clubs are deemed to be in breach, meaning we then have 2 seasons to 'break even' as such which IIRC still allows for pre-tax operating losses of no more than 35m in total.  If we did the job properly then we'd not need to continue to buy heavily and we could look to use the internal youngsters to step up as needs be.  Any player trading would serve to either raise any revenues we used whilst essentially banking both the increased kit and TV revenues towards 'breaking even', or to simply reduce our wages regarding FFP.  At worst the penalties for a breach by UEFA are a fine, transfer ban and restriction on registered squad numbers, all of which we have self imposed on more than one occasion.

IMO we have what could amount to being a last chance to grab top4 whilst the likes of MU & CFC are still no better on or off the pitch.  We need to be smarter and to make the system work for us as we've ballsed up far too many opportunities to date to be able to afford to take the moral high ground and neglect to do so again.

Ricky1985 wrote:

Ospina has gone Napoli, I thought?

Of the signings that look the most likely:

Saliba, if we sign him and then don't loan him, wouldn't need registering because of his age. Tierney, however, would. SFA trained players do not count as homegrown.

Which is probably why Fraser is seen as a sort of last option.  
By that same measure Welsh players count as HG for domestic comps, but not under UEFA rules, and visa versa for Welsh clubs in UEFA comps.

Anzac wrote:

Big Willie wrote:

...

I don't think Zaha is good enough to be targeted just because he is HG, let alone for any price over 30m re his age and lack of end product.  He has the highest rates for being dispossessed and poor 1st touch in offence per game in the PL 
  
...

I don't think we need another Denilson with a good first touch who doesn't get dispossessed because he plays the safe sideways pass all the time. Even Ozil who has topped assist charts for his whole career stopped making forward passes and turned into this last season and contributed something pathetic like 3 assists from a high of 19 (i think) a couple of seasons earlier.

You need to watch the player on the pitch rather than only using stats then you would realise why a player with Zaha's style of play (takes on defenders every time) and position on the pitch (forward line) would have a high rate of being dispossessed.
Emery is not an idiot who will simply buy a player because he is available. Any interest would come after analysing what benefit he would be to the team.

Just so we don't waste too much time on this, i also don't want Zaha but my main reasons are the price and the sell-on fee.
I don't dismiss him for not being elite as we are not elite ourselves and not likely to be elite any time soon.

Anzac wrote:

Big Willie wrote:

We can only have a maximum of 17 non-HG players in our 25-man squad. This doesn’t include u21s (e.g. players born on or after 1st January 1998). This includes the likes of ESR, Nelson and Willock. We can have as many as we want of those with no effect on the number of other players in our 25 man squad.

Of the remaining HG players, that leaves us with Bellerin, Iwobi, Holding and AMN as those with some claim to being a first team regular. Then you have the likes of Jenkinson that we can't move on, Chambers who we may move on and a couple others who will not be expected to be part of the first team plans for next season. Thay leaves us with 4/potentially 6 HG players next season depending on our sales/purchases.

Now, our main squad has the following non HG players:

Leno
Ospina
Sok
Kos
Mustafi (please no)
Nacho
Mav
Kola
Xhaka
Torreira
Elneny (Will hopefully leave)
Mkhi (stuck here)
Ozil (stuck here)
Auba
Laca

Unless we can shift a number if these players, we'll only be able to buy 2 more non HG players before needing to sell first.

The benefit of HG is if the HG player us good enough it effectively gives us one extra non HG space as that player can be counted as one of the 8 HG spots rather than the 17 non HG spots.

  
We don't need the HG players to be 1st team quality or even part of the match day squad, and whilst we do not need to register players u21 we can do so if we want to make up the numbers. 

That's the thing. We don't need to do that. There is no benefit to having U21 players registered for the sake of making up numbers. The 8 HG spots are for HG players over 21 with everyone else who isn't over 21 needing to be registered as part of the 17 non HG group of players

And Ricky, you're right. Forgot about Ospina leaving.

The fee for this guy is absolute joke, compared to the fact Ziyech has a €30mil rc.

It's not a joke.
Palace don't want to sell their best player so are using the price as a barrier.
I wish we had done the same when Barca came for Cesc.
Its kind of similar to how Liverpool and spurs got stupid money for Suarez, Coutinho and Bale.

This whole discussion is irrelevant to us. This pricing only makes sense if Liverpool come sniffing around like truffle pigs in the forest. Arsenal alone cannot support it
When compared to Ziyech I actually think Zaha can give us more of an X factor just because of his directness, but our present situation dictates that we sign someone in the price range of Ziyech and keep it moving.

Muswell Hill Gooner wrote:

Anzac wrote:

I don't think Zaha is good enough to be targeted just because he is HG, let alone for any price over 30m re his age and lack of end product.  He has the highest rates for being dispossessed and poor 1st touch in offence per game in the PL 
  
...

I don't think we need another Denilson with a good first touch who doesn't get dispossessed because he plays the safe sideways pass all the time. Even Ozil who has topped assist charts for his whole career stopped making forward passes and turned into this last season and contributed something pathetic like 3 assists from a high of 19 (i think) a couple of seasons earlier.

You need to watch the player on the pitch rather than only using stats then you would realise why a player with Zaha's style of play (takes on defenders every time) and position on the pitch (forward line) would have a high rate of being dispossessed.
Emery is not an idiot who will simply buy a player because he is available. Any interest would come after analysing what benefit he would be to the team.

Just so we don't waste too much time on this, i also don't want Zaha but my main reasons are the price and the sell-on fee.
I don't dismiss him for not being elite as we are not elite ourselves and not likely to be elite any time soon.

His stats are nearly double that for the likes of Hazard and Sterling who are either side of him in terms of dribbles per game.

I doubt if there is any interest in Zaha at all as there have been no reports of any bids made or discussion with either Palace or the player himself, unlike the talk reported re Tierney or Carrasco.

Big Willie wrote:

Anzac wrote:

  
We don't need the HG players to be 1st team quality or even part of the match day squad, and whilst we do not need to register players u21 we can do so if we want to make up the numbers. 

That's the thing. We don't need to do that. There is no benefit to having U21 players registered for the sake of making up numbers. The 8 HG spots are for HG players over 21 with everyone else who isn't over 21 needing to be registered as part of the 17 non HG group of players

And Ricky, you're right. Forgot about Ospina leaving.

Agreed but my point is that we don't need Zaha re HG as we don't need to register 25 players aged over 21, and we've not done so previously.

Muswell Hill Gooner wrote:

It's not a joke.
Palace don't want to sell their best player so are using the price as a barrier.
I wish we had done the same when Barca came for Cesc.
Its kind of similar to how Liverpool and spurs got stupid money for Suarez, Coutinho and Bale.

You can blame AW for that = he went against the club 2x in favour of firstly selling him and then by telling them to accept Barca's offer in order for him to go.  AW should have been sacked then and there.

PHW didn't want to sell but AW had a gentleman's agreement with Fabregas after getting him to stay the previous season.  PHW then placed a fee of 54m on him (this is before the TV deals skyrocketed, and AW said he'd agreed to let him go if a decent fee was offered, with 30m being considered decent at the time.  AW then haggled for the extra 4m and buy back option and Barca then signed Fabregas and immediately implemented a release clause of over 50m.