One difference between them is what they achieved by the age of 21.

Olise has looked a promising player in the top flight for some 18 months now, but only very recently showed any signs of being a consistent matchwinner. He has generally disappeared more than he has turned up, and whilst that is perfectly normal and natural, the club is not (and cannot yet be) built around Olise as an outstanding individual.

At 21, Zaha was accustomed to carrying Palace. He had torn the championship to shreds, and done probably more than any other individual to get the club promoted.

When he came back, Zaha (for a number of years) certainly did more than anyone else to keep us up. He took personal responsibility for results, and that's a totally different level of expectation and responsibility from the one Olise has experienced. We asked Wilf to carry the team, and he did. How many have done that? Outside of Gerrard at Liverpool or Le Tissier at Southampton, I can't think of any top-flight side to be so dependent on one player.

In terms of comparing attitudes, I get that Zaha can increasingly frustrate. He has been a big fish in a small pond for too long, and that has given him some bad habits. He holds the ball far too long and kills counterattacks. He doesn't bust a gut to defend. He thinks only of scoring individual goals when he gets the ball.

At the same time, we have asked him to win games by himself for so long that what else should we expect? I wouldn't take any of the above to be evidence of a bad attitude. Let's not forget, whilst we would not have got promoted without him, he wasn't even our player any more at the time. He had his own place in the top flight secured already, but rather than see out his loan spell at half-speed, go through the motions and avoid injury, he flew into the challenge. He did more than anyone to get us up when he was up already. I think that gets overlooked a bit when people talk about 'attitude'.

In the end, he came back because he wanted to play. How many players just sit in the stands and pick up their money? Wilf didn't. He walked away from Man United to play the game.

Olise is a different story. Whatever he says about not wanting to move, there is no way he will end up doing the number of games Zaha has, He will be expecting to move on in the next two years or so.

As a player, the two are very different. Olise can dribble, but he sees (and plays) passes. We will see more of that if he gets decent movement around him (like Eze's run for the third goal at Leeds). I am looking forward to that development, but he will never get the crowd on their feet in the way Wilf used to. In the first half of his career when he played out on the wing, Wilf was the most exciting player I've ever seen in a Palace shirt. Whether Championship or premier league, how often do you see seasoned professionals so desperately failing to contain an irrepressible force of nature like that? We won't see the likes of Zaha again. The roar that would go up when he got the ball isn't one Olise has generated yet.

It is time for Wilf to go, no doubt about it. He needs to have his last shot at the big time and not carry a whole club every time he plays. We need to move past depending on him, and in turn, develop a different style of team play. I am looking forward to a team built around, but not dependent upon, Olise and Eze because they are such good footballers. We will play better football with them to the fore (and hopefully at least one decent striker), but the idea that either player can be compared with Wilf just doesn't stack up for me.

Edited by TheBigToePunt (18 Apr 2023 12.12pm)

I don't want to labour the point, and I am aware that stories in the press are not always accurate. However, it remains that young Michael has dismissed the rumours, true or otherwise, within days of them arising. Wilf was silent all summer long, year after year about his intentions to move on. Different gravy.

I agree completely, but it's still disrespectful to his club at the time.

More what I'm getting at is to highlight that we are just another step on Olise's path to bigger things - I think it's quite hard to give him any sort of moral high ground over Wilf when it comes to transfers and their relationship with our club, as the OP has done.

We'll be the small team that Michael is describing to his latest social media interest when the time comes for his next move.