On-loan Chelsea forward Loic Remy, remember him? Crystal Palace brought the Frenchman to Selhurst Park last summer but the former Newcastle forward has barely featured this season.
Limited to three FA Cup outings for Palace and just 131 minutes of Premier League football, Remy, who couldn’t make his debut until January, has spent the majority of his season-long loan at Selhurst on the sidelines, mainly due to injury.
Steve Parish has admitted it’s been a difficult year for the French international but Remy, 28, isn’t expected to join Palace on a permanent deal.
He told Holmesdale Radio, via the Daily Express: ‘I don’t know how he’s feeling, I haven’t spoken to Loic. He’s been injured for most of the season unfortunately, so it’s very, very difficult. I think Loic had the odd chance but it has been a long time with football for him when you look back at Chelsea and his lack of appearances there. It didn’t work out for him, so we wish him all the best. With injuries and what have you this season, it didn’t work.’
During his time at Stamford Bridge – joining Chelsea in 2014 – Remy has started only 15 games in total for his parent club, where he’s under contract for another year.
The future of Mamadou Sakho at Selhurst is also uncertain, but the on-loan Liverpool defender is a player both Parish and Sam Allardyce would like to sign – on the right deal.
Even though the January arrival only made eight appearances for the club it didn’t prevent Sakho’s nomination as an option for Palace’s Player of the Year award, won by Wilfried Zaha in the end.
Allardyce is keen on signing £30m-rated Sakho but only if the price is right as Palace’s budget isn’t going to be entirely blown on one player.
He was quoted by the Croydon Advertiser: ‘It’s something that the chairman has said and that I’ve said for a while, that we would try to negotiate but for a club like ours, the figures would have to match up to what else we have got to try to do. If we have got the budget for it, that the big question – have we got the budget for it? If we have, then great but if we haven’t then we have to move on.’
Allardyce continued: ‘We will need strengthening in other areas and it depends how much that [signing Sakho] would weaken our financial position to be able to strengthen in other areas. We will have a conversation about that next week, me and the chairman, and we are hopefully going in the same direction as far as what [deals] we want to renegotiate, what we want to move on from the club and what we want to bring in. That will be a tough summer as always.’
