£50m for the worst striker in the league?

Jean-Philippe Mateta is certainly off… somewhere. Maybe Milan, maybe Nottingham Forest, maybe a late mystery bidder. In any event, Crystal Palace need a striker, and they’ve turned to Wolverhampton Wanderers man Jørgen Strand Larsen. With Wolves all but relegated, it makes sense to cash in now on their starting striker.

But the price is looking pretty crazy. Fabrizio Romano reports that the deal is all but done for £45m + £5m in add-ons. It’s an eye-popping number for a striker who has arguably been the worst regular starter in the Premier League this season.

Palace are, of course, betting that this year’s numbers are fake. They think that Larsen’s talent is much closer to what he produced last season, rather than this year’s abysmal showing. The headline of this piece really was not an exaggeration or clickbait — Larsen has an argument as the worst performing attacker in the league.

Palace don’t think that’s going to happen when Larsen gets into their lineup. They think that this is going to happen instead.

And I’m inclined to agree with them. If someone was buying low on Larsen, getting well below his previous rumoured price due to his extreme downturn in form, I’d very much support buying the dip. But at £50m, you’re paying the kind of price you’d expect to throw down for a guy who’s producing right now. I think that this transfer is going to work out fine and Larsen will revert to being a double-digit goal scorer on a non-trash team, but Palace are assuming a ton of risk here.

This feels like a panic buy, and a completely unnecessary one. Palace are 8 points clear of the drop, and as much as they’ve struggled recently, they’re almost certainly too good to get relegated. They could have just picked up a loan striker off the scrap heap and waited on Larsen’s price to drop. But they’ve probably already screwed themselves out of getting Larsen cheaper in the summer by agreeing to a price in principle.

We’re doing transfer rumours instead of the usual Friday grab bag due to the occasion of the deadline, but we’re keeping the section with the other stuff that’s going on around The Transfer Flow.

Patrick and Neel talked about the Larsen to Palace deal on the podcast, and also recapped the wild final day of UEFA Champions League action.

On the Patreon-exclusive podcast, the boys talked about their most overrated and underrated players in the Premier League. The Patreon has an exclusive long podcast + some bonus behind-the-scenes conversation every week.

On Variance Betting, Ted has 6 bets on the Premier League and 5 on the Championship this week. We were +1 on the Champions League midweek, and stand at +21 units for the season.

He’s made quite a bit taking the goals on underdogs vs. big teams this season, but there’s one bet going against that trend this week. If you’d like to see explanations of all the bets and lines every week so you can learn how to be a smarter better, you can subscribe to Variance Betting here.

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More transfer rumours

• As we’ve covered many times in this newsletter, money isn’t real in Turkey. Fenerbahce are expected to wrap up two big moves before the deadline, Ademola Lookman from Atalanta and Sidiki Cherif from Angers. They’re going to cost a combined €60m+.

• With those two arriving, Jhon Duran will be exiting. His strange career path continues as he goes on loan to Lille.

• Also in competition for Main Character Status is AC Milan, who sit 2nd in Serie A at the moment. As previously mentioned, they’re the leaders in the clubhouse for Mateta. They’re very much trying to sign a center back, perhaps Jose Maria Gimenez from Atlético Madrid or Radu Dragusin from Tottenham Hotspur. They’re also trying to ship out Christopher Nkunku, big ol whoopsie on that transfer.

• Napoli are in negotiations to sign Alisson Santos, a player who has got on the field in almost every match for Sporting Lisbon, but has yet to play 500 minutes. Bro just gets nothing but 15 minute appearances and it’s absolutely juicing tf out of his stats

• And now it’s time for the “He’s Still In The League???” section of the newsletter. You might have forgotten that these guys were still active professional footballers:

• Raheem Sterling has offers from 7 “Champions League caliber” clubs. I can’t wait to see him make exactly 5 appearances for Tottenham. Kalvin Phillips, who is still on Manchester City’s books somehow, has loan offers from Wolves and Burnley. Arsenal is actually getting a fee for Oleksandr Zinchenko, good for them. Axel Disasi going to West Ham because he can’t be arsed to move house, relatable.

• Leon Goretzka will not renew his contract at Bayern Munich, but he’s also not considering a move this January. Atléti tried, but the hulking midfielder is staying put.

• Atléti has moved on to Davide Frattesi, which is Italian for Conor Gallagher.

• Here’s a really stupid Jude Bellingham rumour. Chelsea will not be signing him. They don’t pay those kinds of wages. The whole deal with the Chelsea project is they think high end players make too much money, and they want to cut wages.

• A ton of teams are apparently interested in Reims’ 19-year-old star Patrick Zabi, and they’re holding out for €30m. He’s been hailed as one of the top players in Ligue 2 this season, and wow this is a weird profile. Playmaking, dribbling machine CM who doesn’t do much else. I don’t know if I’d pay €30m for this, but I do want to watch this kind of player at a high level.

• Karim Benzema is pissed after being offered a contract extension at Al Ittihad that was a massive reduction in pay. LA Galaxy striker Karim Benzema, anyone???

If you enjoyed this newsletter, we’d appreciate it if you would forward it to a friend. If you’re that friend, welcome! You can subscribe to The Transfer Flow here. We also have a podcast where we go in depth on transfer news and rumours every week. We’re on YouTube here, and you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify by searching for “The Transfer Flow Podcast.” If you’re interested in football betting, check out this post on why we started Variance Betting.