16 Season Preview 2019-20 FourFourTwoCRYSTAL PALACE
AaronWan-Bissakaleavingwasanundeniably
big blow for Crystal Palace, but as Oscar Wilde so
memorably said on Match of the Day, to lose one
homegrown superstar is a misfortune, to lose two
looks like carelessness.
At the time of writing, Wilf is still a Crystal Palace
player – and to be honest, writing this preview is hard
when I’ve been crossing my fingers so much, I have
repetitive strain injury.
And that ‘Wilf’ is important. To us he’s not ‘Zaha’,
he’s not ‘Wilfried Zaha’, he’s just ‘Wilf’. If you stand at
the very top of the Arthur Wait Stand and lean out asCAn PALACE POSSIBLY COPE
WITHOUT WILFRIED ZAHA?
PREMIER LEAGUE
2019-20
far as you can, you can just about see the primary
school that Wilf went to. He’s as local as it gets, and
losing him would be a genuine sickener. In particular,
losing him to Arsenal would be even worse, seeing
as we have as much chance of playing Champions
League football as they do.
It wouldn’t just be that we were losing a brilliant
and unpredictable player. (I watched George Best
play for Manchester United and Fulham; when he got
the ball, a sort of expectant purr went round the
home fans. The same thing happens with Wilf.) Not
only that, we would be losing a talisman. He’s our
Matt Le Tissier: we know he’s brilliant, but we don’t
want him going somewhere else to prove it.Wan-Bissaka is a brilliant right-back, but he’s just
a right-back. There are loads of them. There’s only one
Wilf. That’s why we’ve slapped such a huge price tag
on him. Chairman Steve Parish’s logic is simple: going
down would cost us £110 million; we are more likely
to be relegated without Wilf; therefore it will cost you
£110 million to buy him.
Truth is, we are more likely to get relegated without
him, and not just because we very rarely win when he
doesn’t play (although that’s not as true as it used to
be: having lost all 10 of the 2017-18 Premier League
games he didn’t start, Palace won two of the four last
season, even if one was against Fulham so it barely
counts). More importantly, it would depress the whole
place before a ball has even been kicked.
We are realists. We know we have to produce our
own talent to survive. But to thrive, we have to keep
them. If Wilf forced a move away, it would send out
a message that we can never compete with the big
clubs, so what’s the point?
And none of us would sleep for worrying how many
goals he will score against us.LAST SEASON
PREMIER LEAGUE 12th
FA CUP Quarter-Finals
LEAGUE CUP Fourth Round
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Luka Milivojevic (12)