Crystal Palace sign £50m Forest star and £35m full-back in huge summer transfer window predictionplaceholder image
Crystal Palace sign £50m Forest star and £35m full-back in huge summer transfer window prediction | Getty Images
Crystal Palace sign £115m of players to replace Eze and Guéhi in a summer transfer window prediction.
Crystal Palace may have won the FA Cup and qualified for Europe for the first time, but they’re still headed towards a summer rebuild despite their success, with at least two key players overwhelmingly likely to leave Selhurst Park. If Palace want to maintain their momentum, they’ll have to get this transfer window just right.
Marc Guéhi seems set to move to Liverpool as he enters the final year of his contract and attacking midfielder Eberechi Eze is likely to follow him amid interest from both Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal. Replacements for both are, presumably, required, but finding affordable players who can replicate their excellence on the pitch will be a challenge.
The rumour mill offers us plenty of hints as to which direction Palace will take with their transfer dealings over the coming couple of months, of course, but what if we used some new tools to figure out what the club might do? We decided to feed an AI learning model all of the information it needed to see if it could work out what the Eagles might do...
Crystal Palace predicted to make surprising £50m move to replace Eze
Starting at the top, we asked the AI to figure out which players Palace would sign once Eze left, based on their finances, tactical needs and some statistical analysis. Just how good AI actually is at any of that is debatable, of course, but it spat out a surprising but not insensible answer.
According to the algorithm, Palace will spend about £50m of the £60-70m it estimates the club will earn from the sale of Eze on Nottingham Forest’s Morgan Gibbs-White, suggesting that the England international’s playing profile means that he would “perfectly replace” Eze and that Gibbs-White himself would be happy to play in the Europa League rather than the Conference League.
We’re not entirely convinced that Gibbs-White would be swayed quite so easily by a small step up in the tier of his continental competition, but there’s little argument against the idea that he would be a perfect replacement for Eze. Both in term of his positioning and technical qualities, he maps onto Oliver Glasner’s tactics rather neatly.
We do, admittedly, doubt the price tag. Forest paid up to £42.5m for Gibbs-White including add-ons when they signed him from Swansea City, and we suspect they’d want to make more of a profit on any eventual sale. Still, Manchester City seem to have cooled their alleged interest, and there may not be many bidders.
They won’t just be signing Gibbs-White in this AI prediction, however – they’d also be spending up to £20m on Lens midfielder Andy Diouf, who has been linked with Palace on a few occasions.
He’s more of a traditional midfielder who can play further forward than a full-on attacking midfielder, but the AI observes that his ball-carrying qualities and ability to force turnovers makes him a fine fit for Glasner’s playing style.
The AI estimates that the chances of a deal for Diouf are “high” while those of agreeing a fee for Gibbs-White are merely “moderate”, so at least it’s aware of which deals are more difficult to pull off than others – but if Eze is to leave, it certainly predicts a future that Palace fans would probably be more than happy with.
£35m full-back and £50m Guéhi replacement on the way
One assumption that the AI seems to have made that may prove wide of the mark is that Palace will get at least £50m for the outgoing Guéhi – with just a year left on his Palace contract, they’ll likely get less, and perhaps that would leave them short of the funds to sign the defensive reinforcements that are predicted to be on the way.
The algorithm keeps things simple with its prediction for a Guéhi replacement, suggesting that Palace will beat off any competition that emerges for their known number one target, Sporting defender Ousmane Diomande.
In line with widespread media reports, the AI believes it will take at least £40m to sign the young Ivorian and up to £50m, but there seems to be some computerised confidence that a deal will get done.
They’ll also be adding a full-back, according to the prediction, and it’s not a name we’ve seen on the rumour mill – Fulham’s American international Antonee Robinson, who was the leading assist provider from defence in the Premier League last season.
Now, we’ll note that in justifying an alleged £35m move, the AI uses some statistics which are simply incorrect, starting with the claim that he has just two assists to his name over the last year (it was 10), so we wonder if this is a classic learning model mistake rather than a sensible suggestion, but it’s hardly too far from the realms of feasibility.
It’s only those four players that the AI reckons Palace will sign, but it also suspects that two more will leave Selhurst Park – Odsonne Edouard, who is sold to an unspecified French team for £5-10m, and Naouirou Ahamada, who will drop down to the Championship, netting up to £8m in the process. Not earth-shattering moves, perhaps, but they’ll take the edge off the Robinson bid.
Do AI learning models have any capacity to sensibly predict a transfer window? Heaven knows, but we’ll find out in just a few months whether we should be impressed, spooked, or left rolling our eyes at some dodgy technology. Palace fans, at least, probably wouldn’t complain if the computers got it right this time around.
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