Marc Guehi and Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish
Marc Guehi and Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish
Steve Parish has explained why Crystal Palace turned down big-money offers from Newcastle United for Marc Guehi last summer.
Parish was not shy in outlining his demands for 'superstar money' for Guehi during the saga and Newcastle ultimately stopped formally bidding for the England international in the final weeks of the window. The Magpies felt that the Crystal Palace chairman's demands went beyond what the club were prepared to pay for the Eagles captain who, at the time, had less than two years left on his contract.
Guehi has since played his part in Crystal Palace reaching the FA Cup final and achieving another comfortable mid-table finish following a difficult start to the campaign for Oliver Glasner's team. However, Guehi is now approaching the final year of his deal and Glasner admitted that the England international 'is thinking what is best for his personal career and this is what we have to accept'.
In a new interview with Gary Neville, Parish was asked about 'resisting the temptation' to sell Guehi after Crystal Palace had 'those big bids coming in from Newcastle' as well as the delicate dilemma the Eagles faced between keeping a key player and missing out on a huge fee after the club had already sold Michael Olise and Joachim Andersen last summer.
"The first thing is we need to stay in the division so that's the first north star and that's obviously not easy as we can see from even Man United and Tottenham this year," he told the Overlap US. "They're not really close to relegation, but that's arguably because we have all taken a lot of points this year off the bottom three clubs. Anything that increases the risk of that dramatically, it's very difficult to find a way to do it.
"After that, then, of course, we will be a trading club. We want to survive and thrive in this division for two reasons: firstly because financially you have to cover the cost of running the club and, secondly, because the kind of players we want to attract we need to show them a pathway.
"We're a destination for those great pros that have still got a massive competitive instinct, still want to do well, still want to give everything when they cross the white line but they realise they're probably not quite going to get to the level above us. Then there are players that are on a journey and on their way to the Bayern Munichs and other clubs. We realised over a period of time that we have to be really open to it.
"The thing you have to do with clubs like ours is manage that process as well as you can so not to lose too many. I remember Sir Alex [Ferguson] used to try and bring in two players every summer. He thought any more than that was very difficult to integrate in the squad. That would be the kind of number of your real premium talent that you would be really able to deal with in any one summer so trying to time things so you can manage that is what we're trying to do."