I think you've introduced a dose of reality here.

If we look at the financials first, Palace are hamstrung in terms of revenue growth. As you rightly say, even the proposed new development will only take us to a level of our peer group.

That in turn restricts Palace's ability to compete in the transfer market. Which also means increased pressure to get the right players in and not waste money.

There are 2 ways around this.

Firstly, the owners could inject more investment into the club. Harris and Blitzer get a lot of bad press, understandably so given their reported interest in taking their money elsewhere. But they have been part of our sustaining our place in the PL. However, if you and I can see a '' glass ceiling '' for Palace, you can guarantee they can as well. Textor then becomes the more interesting character. It's unclear what he ultimately expects from his share of Palace, but I think he's going to take a different approach from them. It's not hard to see a scenario whereby Textor ( finances permitting ) buys H and B's shares. At that point I would anticipate a significant change in how the club is run and by whom. For better or for worse ? - couldn't say.

Secondly, player sales. We've seen plenty of references to how the likes of Brentford and Brighton are thriving at the moment, while Palace stay firmly midtable. Both clubs have sold players at considerable profit without it affecting their ability to compete on the playing field. Our main departures have been AWB and Sorloth in the last few years. Hopefully, but not of course guaranteed, our Academy will bear fruit and we can generate some meaningful transfer fees. But Palace's scouting needs to radically improve as well. Our saleable assets at the moment are Guehi, Andersen, Olise and Eze. The rumour mill has already started re Guehi although the fee quoted must have come from Daniel Levy ! But we may need to become more of a development and selling club to generate funds.

Yes, if eventually we do go down the club will be in a healthier state than before although that's a low benchmark given the days pre 2010's ownership.

For what it's worth I think that Steve Parish has been an outstanding custodian of our football club. I know he's not everybody's cup of tea, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.

An interesting summer beckons....

This idea comes up every now and again, doesn't it?

I'm not sure how keen I am. On one hand, the lack of valuable/saleable players hindered any attempt to reinvigorate the squad during the Hodgson years. AWB was a one-off in that we took United to the cleaners for a player we didn't even miss that much, but there was nobody else we could sell for decent money (Zaha being too valuable to sell), and so no method to raise funds for new recruits, or even just to shake things up a bit.

I believe the club when they say that the main stand project stalled because the academy was the focus, but I sometimes wonder if the (then) lack of playing assets played its part too. It must be a lot easier for Parish to commit to a £100m+ project in the knowledge that if we do get into money trouble, Eze, Guehi and Olise could be sold.

At the same time, selling your best players has never really been a route to glory. I'm not sure many (or any) clubs actually trade their way upward successfully once they are in the top flight.

Brentford traded well when they were in the Championship rather than the Premier League. If you sell a Watkins or Benrahma for £20m or so, you can spend £10-15m on a decent replacement for that level of football, whilst also making a profit. I don't think they could repeat the process now.

Firstly, the likes of Toney and Mbeumo are confident and effective PL players now, but they were not asked to hit the ground running at the highest level. They developed in the second tier. I wonder if Edouard, for example, would be a different animal now if he had scored a tonne of goals in the championship with us before having to take on the big boys.

That's the problem for Palace, and will be for Brentford too now - a new signing must make a decent impact almost instantly or he will be rotated, dropped and subbed. He won't have time to develop and grow. That reduces the market considerably.

Secondly, it is generally easier to find a good player for the Championship (especially if you've got £20m burning a hole in your pocket) than it is to find someone to improve a midtable top-flight side, simply because the better your team, the fewer players there are that could improve it.

Finally, (and I think this is a really big issue for Palace) every signing is a gamble, and so a model built on selling the ones that did work out well, just so you can gamble again will surely come back to bite you in the end. Look at Southampton and Burnley. You can only roll the dice so many times. This becomes an issue even when you get a very big fee (which would be the aim).

You've lost your best player, who makes a difference every week for (let's say) £50m, but you can't go out and buy a £50m player to replace him. Brentford, Palace etc just aren't big enough clubs to attract that type of player, so you end up gambling on another £20m player, in the hope he achieves mega-lift-off in the same way as his predecessor. Which just isn't likely to happen.

Brighton are doing well (though finishing 9th and spending the first half of this season up in the top 6 is actually nothing much more than we've done ourselves in the recent past), but you can see already that once you set yourselves up as a selling club, it's not long before the assets expect to be sold. The manager and his staff went when the club was at its highest point ever. Caicedo almost had an emotional breakdown about not being able to leave this January. Once you set yourself up as a stepping-stone to bigger things, it's very hard to be anything else.

I'm not sure what the answer is. Having no assets on the pitch seems dangerous and to be avoided, but being a selling club seems a difficult route to take once you've reached our sort of level. I certainly doubt it will transform us into a next-level club, and worry it'll do the opposite.

I think you make some really good points, but a counterpoint is that what Brighton and Brentford seem to have in common is a clear plan of how they want to play and stability. It's much easier to replace a player with a like-for-like when you know exactly what you're looking for. Chelsea are what happens when you don't.

Burnley's issue was that they basically stopped spending any money and left Dyche to rely on players that were past their use-by date. I believe if they'd given him 40-50m a season they'd still be in the top flight and he'd still be manager there. Southampton took it too far to the point that if the manager went out for a wee by the time he came back the club had sold another player. Like you say though, you can't keep expecting to replace a 50m player with a 20m one, plus the selling clubs start to notice the pattern and probably add a premium.

The best players will always want to play for the biggest clubs. It would be strange if they didn't. The good thing is Parish does seem to have taken a leaf out of Levy's book when it comes to getting the best prices.

Similarly at Southampton they seemed to have the Midas touch but it only lasted so long and they went south too.

What is the model for success, for a club like Palace, if not smart player trading? Over any sustained period, we would presently have the second or third lowest free cash flow in the division. Over time, without a unique plan, gravity will inevitably tell.

It's fine to find fault in the player trading model. But to my mind it's our only hope.

I think you're probably right, and I'm sure Parish has come to the same conclusion for very sensible reasons.

Buying established, decent players for market value isn't sustainable; the club accounts show that we can't do that without running up debt. We need to bring our own players through even if only to avoid spending transfer fees (presuming of course they are good enough), keep trying to find little gems for free or low-fees (Guaita for instance), get every last drop out of stalwarts. Where we do spend money, we must try to aim for players with development potential and sell-on value.

My point is simply that player trading isn't a means for Palace to reach the next level of football, which some seem to think it is. Trading, like the academy and main stand projects, is just another way of trying to stay where we are for a bit longer if we can.

We should of course be doing it well if we can, but shouldn't mistake it for something more beneficial than it actually is.