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This article is part of Football FanCast’s Transfer Focus series, which provides opinion and analysis on recent transfer news…
Everton are reportedly poised to make a bid for Crystal Palace winger Wilfried Zaha, according to Sky Sports, which could force Premier League rivals Arsenal into action.
What’s the word then?
Zaha wants to leave Palace and test himself at a new club and Everton and Arsenal are the two sides to have shown interest.
The Gunners made a bid of £40m which was rejected by the south Londoners, and now the Toffees are expected to make a bid in the region of £60m plus a player for the ex-Manchester United man.
His preference is to remain in London and sign for Arsenal, but he is willing to move back to the North-West despite an unsuccessful spell under David Moyes in Manchester during the 2013-14 campaign.
Crystal Palace are understood to value their asset at £80m.
Everton bid forces Arsenal’s hands
Everton’s bid suggests there’s competition for Arsenal that they didn’t have before, and while the extra demand should make it harder for the Gunners to secure their man, there’s another perspective to this which is far more positive.
It’s surprising enough as it is that thus far no other club has come to tempt Palace to selling their star man until the Everton interest. Arsenal may have been resting on their laurels, and now have no choice but to make a quick decision on how they want to persist with the Zaha transfer.
They seem reluctant to match Palace’s valuation of £80m with the reported limited budget they have, though Kaveh Solhekol at Sky Sports News believes this is a “smokescreen”.
Check out 4 things Unai Emery got wrong in his first season at Arsenal in the video below…
This will now start to truly unveil the nature of the Gunners’ financial mite as they’re to be forced into a decision: do you have the money or not? If the answer is ultimately “no”, then other targets can be approached. Likewise, the answer may be “yes”, but the follow-up question regards whether the majority of the budget should be spent on one winger when “three or four” players need to be recruited this summer, according to Unai Emery himself.
Clarity is yet to be reached here, no one quite knows what Arsenal’s transfer strategy is and how they’ll respond to Everton’s move for Zaha. However, they’ll now be forced to decide whether the winger really is the ‘number one’ target they’re seeking, or whether spreading the fees over deals for Kieran Tierney, Everton Soares and other linked players might be a better use of the cash.
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