With Roy Hodgson seemingly calmly navigating Crystal Palace away from the relegation zone, the Eagles now need to plan their future.
One of the pressing issues they have will be the future of Wilfried Zaha, whose contract at Selhurst Park expires in the summer.
There’s still a chance the forward renews his deal with Crystal Palace, but the trend appears to be him leaving on a free at the end of the season, with a few clubs around the world interested in his services, as per Foot Mercato.
Arsenal are said to be one of those, but they aren’t the only team mentioned by the French outlet, who are now on their second article on the matter in the span of a week.
It’s said that Marseille in France ‘have just been offered the player’, and the Ligue 1 side ‘have not said no, quite the contrary’.
In fact, ‘contact took place’ between Zaha himself, his entourage and Marseille, with those around the player making the first move.
Down their end, the French club ‘were rather open to the possibility’ of signing the 30-year-old, but they’re still a long way from doing.
One of the reasons behind that is that they still need to qualify for next season’s Champions League (a pre-requisite for the forward), and there’s also clubs from the Middle East hovering.
They might not have top European football to offer, but they certainly have deep pockets, which could certainly be a convincing factor.
Money isn’t everything for Zaha, but it’s said ‘there is no doubts that he will not accept’ wages lower than those he gets at Crystal Palace (around €6m/year), which is an amount Marseille could struggle to reach at this moment in time.
Therefore, there’s still a lot of hurdles to cross before we see the Eagles star in the south of France, but it appears to be something Pablo Longoria is thinking about a lot and he will likely try to figure out how to make it work in the coming weeks.
