In the majority of cases we didn't make a profit on someone we bought, but it's not unheard of.

We made a fortune on Bolasie a couple of years ago. Off the top of my head, we made (sometimes huge) profits selling Ian Wright, Mark Bright, Nigel Martyn, Chris Armstrong, Andy Johnson, Chris Coleman etc.

Looking back at that list the thing that strikes me is how hard we found it to replace players that we sold for decent money. I've never thought the 'buy cheap, develop, sell high, replace and repeat' model was viable, firstly because so few players develop to become highly valuable, and secondly because the chances of getting that lucky twice (once with the player you sell, and then again with the one you sign to replace him) seem so remote.

Perhaps the list proves the point, at least in the Palace context anyway?

Edited by TheBigToePunt (30 Jun 2023 12.32pm)

f*** me, we've pulled the wool over one or two clubs' eyes, haven't we?!

Of course, the actual fees received will generally be larger the more recent they are. In relative terms, we probably got a bigger payday when selling Wright (I think we got £2.5m, some sort of UK record fee at the time, or close to it) than we did selling AWB for twenty times that amount a few years ago.

What is interesting is how, up until recently, Palace selling a player for a big fee either destroyed our team (Wright, Bright, etc) or came about because the team had failed (Martyn, Coleman, Armstrong, etc). It's only recently that we have sold anyone for big money without suffering.

It works both ways though, Liverpool must have laughed at us giving them knocking on £60 million for Benteke and Sakho

The story at the time was that Malcolm Allison told Peter Swales he wanted to sign him for two hundred and fifty which Swales okayed not realising he meant 250,000.
He did score a great goal in the Cup final but it's hard to remember much else about him.