Arsenal: What a friend we have in Crystal Palace

Arsenal are finding Crystal Palace hard to work with in regards to Wilfried Zaha and as for me, I want to take them out for a beer for their service to a drunk friend.

Sometimes, when you’re drunk, you make stupid decisions. Maybe that involves accidentally ordering a $3,000 telescope. What you wouldn’t give to have a friend there, a sober friend, to cancel the order and send you to bed. For Arsenal, their stupid, seemingly drunk decision is Wilfried Zaha, and their sober friend is Crystal Palace.

Wilfried Zaha was already a dumb idea. Not because he isn’t a great player and would more often than not thrive at the Emirates, but because £80m for any player—any—at this point in the Gunners’ situation, is dumb.

But they persisted, with rumors that we’d sell Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to Manchester United to fund the move, or we’d be willing to ditch Reiss Nelson to fund a portion of the move. All sound like dumb ideas. The kind that drunk people would make.

But Crystal Palace are being that pal again. Rather than indulge these ridiculous rumors, they keep raising the price to try to make them go away.

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As I said, £80m was already a bad idea, and Crystal Palace set it for a reason. Because nobody should be willing to pay £80m for Wilfried Zaha. Palace were being that sober friend that want all their pals to know that this is a bad idea.

Arsenal persisted. At least, according to the rumors. They are so drunk in their pursuit of Zaha that even the hefty price tag wasn’t enough to drive them off.

So, according to the rumors, Palace are doing a kindly service, raising the price to £100m. A transfer that would break so many records it isn’t even funny. A transfer that would never, never live up to expectations because that is an insane price to pay for anyone. Absolutely anyone. Let alone someone who was already twice his market value before the price raise.

As it stands, Palace are doing us the biggest favor imaginable. They are making sure that we don’t blow our entire summer on Wilfried Zaha.

This is all making me like Palace, and I used to hate them. I love that they’re making him inapproachable, because it’s the only thing getting in the way of our beloved club and a really bad decision. So thank you, Crystal Palace.