I accept that and wouldn't seek to dispute the points that you raise.
However, I was making a different point.
He had a nasty injury when he signed his 'long term' contract which meant that he missed half of the season.
Such long term contracts become meaningless if you miss half of the first year through injury and still seek an exit at the end of that first year.

One can take the view that it doesn't matter - the player is happy, the club makes a decent return and the contractual stipulations were met.

I take a different view and don't appreciate the cynicism of signing a contract you have no intention of keeping.
People can shrug their shoulders and say there is no loyalty in football.
However, Palace have continued to pay and support him for the lengthy periods he has been out injured.
And if he was out all next season with an injury, that long term contract that he signed less than a year ago with Palace would have proved very useful.
Is loyalty such a dirty word these days?

The premier league is quickly becoming a crap league. Uncompetitive, same clubs sharing the cups and the same team winning the league 5/6 seasons.

So it's harder to do well in. The problem will eventually come when the top European teams become so strong on all fronts but ultimately financial that they become uncompetitive. As you say, Man City are virtually in break away mode.
My guess is eventually the Champions league will become some sort of European league and I daresay it will include a couple of Middle Eastern teams.
Like all sport, football will continue to follow the money.

I wish they bloke well and we move on.
I have to say I'm impressed with all of you fellow Palace fans, calmness about the situation.
Proper football people.

To break up the Olise-Mateta-Eze combination would be a seripus mistake imo, I have heard all the commentators all saying if we retain our top players we could mount a challenge.

Our expectations must be less.

Do we ever want to succeed in the PL, or not?

We don't have any meaningful control over whether or not Olise goes. If:
1. the release clause is met and
2. Olise wants to go to the club which triggered it and
3. they meet Palace's payment terms
then Olise goes - Full stop.

It has nothing to do with the club's ambition. Had we not agreed to release clauses in his contracts, Olise would never have come to Palace.

He's a canny lad, who has immense self-confidence when it comes to his footballing ability and he believed from an early stage of his career (at Reading and possibly earlier) that he was capable of going to the top of the game. We were only ever going to be a stepping stone to a bigger club and at least Bayern Munich fits that moniker and we've had teh joy of watching him play some wonderful football, albeit not as much as we would have liked.