Problem is, if your expectation of a replacement is another player of Zaha's standard...it doesn't exist.

If Zaha is good enough to play for a top 6 side and go for £80m, then we need to sign a £80m player who is good enough to play for the top 6. Why would that player go to Palace? I'd imagine we'd be competing with Chelsea and United for starters. I don't think we'd even get anywhere near a Ryan Fraser type.

Realistically we'd have to be looking at a Reiss Nelson type, a player who has the potential but isn't there yet. On him, sure, he wants to stay at Arsenal. Will he want to when (and in this scenario they have) sign Zaha and he's now one more player down the list which also includes Aubameyang, Lacazette, Ozil, Mkhitaryan, Iwobi....? It's a question we'd need to ask.

Otherwise, you take a player in their prime who isn't as good, but upgrade a couple of other positions while you're at it. That means you're probably looking at a Perez, Redmond, Antonio, Iwobi... with maybe a Batshuayi and take a punt on the next Maddison.

Ideally, yeah Zaha does stay. But if he we get the bid and he's otherwise going to kick the toys out the pram and play like crap, unfortunately we've put a lot of eggs in his basket the last few years and as you say, we can't afford for him to not perform. In that case, we have to get that impact elsewhere.

Exactly. And also getting heavy weight investors over the line so we can redevelop Selhurst. There's quite a few variables to consider and people choose to ignore these things ...

I gotta be honest and I doubt it'll be popular but... 60mil and Reiss Nelson & I'd take it.

Wilf wants to go & he deserves his chance to play at the (almost) top level again. I wouldn't stand in his way & I'm fairly certain he would've made assurances when signing those contracts that he eventually would want to play European football.

All of a sudden we have 60mil in the bank plus a very highly rated young English prospect who will get his chance. We go out and get Saint-Maximin & spend the rest on a proper centre forward. All of a sudden it doesn't look too bad.

Even in today's wildly overinflated market, you have to remember Wilf & AWB are homegrown players, they come at a premium and £110m is still a hell of a lot of money to play with for a of our club our size. This could be the first time we really get to see if DF is worth his salt or not.

As for Wilf, I'd love him to stay. As I'm sure we all would. But he wants to go. Every player wants to compete at the top. We cannot begrudge him at all. He's given us everything & I think it would be absolutely tragic for the club & him to part with even a scintilla of resentment.

Edited by Mstrobez (04 Jul 2019 9.39am)

I’ve told you this before on the AWB thread so I suspect I’m wasting my time but I’ll try again anyway. You do NOT need to replace them individually. Liverpool sold Coutinho and GOT BETTER.

If you have a team (hypothetically) of 9 five out of ten players and 2 eight out of tens. Then if it is, on average, worse than a team of 11 six out of tens. So you could lose the eights (Wilf and AWB) and overall improve (without having one person whose individual quality matches Wilfs).

You are also more resilient to injury and maybe play better as a team.

You can also luck into signing one of those replacement batches of “6 out of tens” and they turn out to be another 8 (essentially what Saints did when they reinvested the Lallana and Wanyama money and bagged Mane and VVD).

That is exactly what I have said ten times about Wilf and AWB.
We cannot replace that kind of homegrown talent in the transfer market with any amount of money in the bank, and that is why selling such quality will guarantee our place in mediocrity forever more until we stop doing it.

The other thing that will condemn us to irrelevance is the seeming lack of ambition among fans.
Arsenal want Zaha and suddenly everyone is worried about poor Wilf's career and how we better cave in and take the money offered.

Can you all hear yourselves?

You get the club you deserve, and that club is in the Championship.

I’ve told you this before on the AWB thread so I suspect I’m wasting my time but I’ll try again anyway. You do NOT need to replace them individually. Liverpool sold Coutinho and GOT BETTER.

If you have a team (hypothetically) of 9 five out of ten players and 2 eight out of tens then it is, on average, worse than a team of 11 six out of tens. So you could lose the eights (Wilf and AWB) and overall improve (without having one person whose individual quality matches Wilfs).

You are also more resilient to injury and maybe play better as a team.

You can also luck into signing one of those replacement batches of “6 out of tens” and they turn out to be another 8 (essentially what Saints did when they reinvested the Lallana and Wanyama money and bagged Mane and VVD).

Edited by Master Coin (04 Jul 2019 11.37am)