If true, that'll be another £15m at least when he moves to Real Madrid or PSG in a few years time.

on the wider issue of players moving on to so-called "better things", we have adopted a policy of buying promising young players. In Olise, Eze, Guehi, Wharton and hopefully Doucoure when he's up and running again we have done exceedingly well and increased both the quality and value of our squad immeasurably.

it's inevitable that such players will be moving on at some point in the hope of achieving silverware (and significantly more money).

We have to:
- enjoy them whilst we have them
- manage the outgoing sales carefully so we don't lose too many in one season's transfer windows.
- hope that with each cycle of purchases/sales/reinvestment our squad becomes stronger and a tilt at qualifying for Europe/winning a cup becomes a genuine possibility.

As for this window, whether or not Eze and Guehi leave depends on:
1. whether or not Eze has a release clause in his contract (I've heard it rumoured both yes and no)
2. whether or not Guehi is willing to extend his current contract - if not (and my understanding is that the club will discuss a contract extension with Guehi after the Euros) then we will get most value for him if we sell him in this window.

I don't want us to lose either of these players but ultimately, if they don't want to be with us we should get top price for them and move on.

An unhappy player forced to stay by reason of his contract can easily lead to disruption and discontent in the dressing room.

It was inevitable. You could see almost straight away that he was a cut above. We got him for a ridiculously low £8 million, so in the grand scheme of things £50-60 million isn't so bad. On the positive side it is a clear sign that top young players have a route to the biggest clubs if they sign for us. The only loyal players these days are the ones without other options. Let's face it, Wharton was a boyhood Blackburn fan and he jumped ship as soon as the PL came calling. It works both ways.

If we can keep Eze and use the Olise money to sign another attacking midfielder/winger to compete with him and Kamada then we will at least have more depth than last season, even if we have lost a real star.

Agree with all of that.

Olise gets his dream move to a European giant, we had him for our benefit and have made some money. Seems like a strategy based in reality for me as opposed to romantically believing players who have a chance of playing at the top level will want to stay at Palace forever.

We have a great manager who is the primary jewel in the crown for me, then we have a scouting system which seems to be producing the goods. I'm sad to see Michael go, as I will be any others, but the bigger picture still looks very promising for the short term future.

Now Zaha's got a bit of green grass ahead of him here... and finds Ambrose... not a bad effort!!!!

Sorry to see him go, but would rather he did now than at the end of the window like Wilf did.

At the end of the day we will always lose players to the clubs that are "bigger" than us, but that's the food chain, we got him from Reading, Bayern get him from us and as some have mentioned, at least it's not another prem rival.

Hoped we'd get a bit more, but the way he's conducted his deals with his agent over the years, it doesn't suprise me that his release clause woudln't be silly money. What with Chelsea tapping him up last year, we didn't have the strongest position to get a much better deal to retain him and we've got more than we would have done had we not agreed a deal last year.

Hopefully now though we can keep hold of Eze and Guéhi (although I suspect Guéhi will be off as well) and use the money to bring in some more quality additions to add to Kamada and Riad. It's not surprisingly really that our first two signings look like they would cover for Olise and Guéhi (although not sure if that's where Kamada plays) so at least we've planned for this for once!

The trouble with computers, of course, is that they're very sophisticated idiots

These are definitely two of the terrible deals I had in mind. And then we spent almost all of the net proceeds from the Wright transfer on a poor and over-priced replacement; Sunderland kindly helping us to ensure the money didn't burn a hole in our pocket.

Palace since 19 August 1972. Palace 1 (Tony Taylor) Liverpool 1 (Emlyn Hughes)

The speculation now moves on to Eze and Guehi. Goodbye Mr Olise.

Red and Blue Army!