Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish says he is “astounded” by the lack of interest in Eberechi Eze during the transfer window.
Eze has plenty of admirers in the Premier League, with Manchester City said to have tracked him over the summer, but no one made a concrete approach for the 26-year-old.
Palace were relieved to keep Eze after seeing Bayern Munich sign Michael Olise for £50m earlier in the window.
“I was really worried from a club point of view of losing Michael and Ebbs in the same window and we didn’t have in Ebbs the interest that I thought we would have,” Parish told Sky Sports News.
“I was astounded. Genuinely astounded. I mean, the guy’s just an outstanding footballer, an outstanding person.”
Why Palace resisted Newcastle’s Guehi bids
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Clinton Morrison says Crystal Palace’s best piece of business was keeping Marc Guehi – despite the signing of Eddie Nketiah
Palace did have plenty of interest in defender Marc Guehi and rejected multiple bids from Newcastle, the latest of which reached £65m inclusive of add-ons.
Parish was expecting Guehi, a stand-out performer for England at Euro 2024, to leave this summer, but the surprise transfer of Joachim Andersen to Fulham and an injury to new-arrival Chadi Riad changed his plans.
“I don’t think the window worked out exactly the same format that we thought it would,” Parish added. “Maybe we thought at the beginning it’d be more likely that Marc Guehi went and we kept Joachim Andersen.
“We accepted that bid [for Andersen] which then made it very difficult really to sell both of our starting centre-backs in one window.
“That’s not to say it wasn’t still an outside possibility that we got to the right number but then Chadi Riad got injured. That doesn’t look quite as bad as it seems but it still left us very light and really made it impossible for us to consider at that point.”
Parish on being happy to sell stars to top clubs
Eberechi Eze and Michael Olise were two of the Premier League’s most exciting players last season
Newcastle’s pursuit of Guehi became one of the sagas of the summer with Palace standing firm on their valuation after receiving sizeable fees for Olise and Andersen.
But Parish is aware that he will not be able to hold on to Guehi – and his other star players – for too long.
“We’re proud of the fact that Michael Olise’s gone to Bayern Munich,” said Parish. “We want to be selling to the top clubs, or to clubs like Newcastle who’ve got great aspirations and have recently been in the Champions League.
“So we have to manage all of those things. We won’t get really great young talent to come to us if they think they’re going to be stuck.”
He added: “We want to be playing in the Champions League. The reality is we don’t right now. That’s what players want to achieve in their career and we respect that and we respect the fact that sometimes we’re going to be a pathway to that.”