It appears that Crystal Palace came very close to selling Sam Johnstone on transfer deadline day, and had targeted Jean Butez as his replacement.
This comes via Sacha Tavolieri, who explains what happened behind the scenes, with everything starting before the transfer of Matz Sels to Nottingham Forest.
Taking to X, formerly Twitter, he reveals that the Tricky Trees initially wanted to sign Johnstone from Crystal Palace, but ‘got stuck on an important point of detail’.
Had that gone through, that would have started some musical chairs, as the Royal Antwerp goalkeeper ‘had been chosen’ by the Selhurst Park club to replace their outgoing goalkeeper.
The Belgian side were ‘aware’ of all this, and were simply ‘awaiting’ Crystal Palace’s offer for their goalkeeper, who himself was ‘ready to pack his bags for London’.
However, since the deal for Johnstone fell through, Nottingham Forest had to go after other options, eventually going for Sels, who was their third choice after Koen Casteels, who seemingly wasn’t being let go by VfL Wolfsburg either.
In short, a lot of work from everyone involved with very few results at the end of it, as Johnstone stayed at Crystal Palace, and Butez never got the move to the Premier League he was clearly keen on.
