Defender should still end up at Anfield despite deadline drama, but the manager’s hardline stance may worry the club board
“Marc and me, we have the same fate,” Oliver Glasner said with a smile. It was the eve of Crystal Palace’s meeting with Liverpool in the Community Shield and – not for the last time over the next few weeks – the unavoidable question of his captain’s future had just been broached.
Marc Guéhi had entered the final year of his contract at Palace and everyone knew a swift resolution was needed. “Of course, everybody wants Marc to sign a new contract,” said Glasner, who had broken off negotiations about extending his own deal after leading Palace to their first major trophy by winning the FA Cup a few weeks earlier. “It will be his decision. We never know what will happen in this sometimes crazy transfer market.”
Yet no one could have imagined quite how dramatically things would turn out. Having said after Palace defeated Arne Slot’s side on penalties at Wembley that “for players of that calibre to leave on a free, it’s a problem for us unfortunately”, a late U-turn on Guéhi’s future by the club’s chairman, Steve Parish, even managed to take the spotlight away from the conclusion to Alexander Isak’s drawn-out move to Anfield for a British record fee on deadline day.
