Rob Seltzer appeared on the latest edition of the Exiled Eagles podcast and during the show, he shared that he would be open to Crystal Palace selling midfielder Luka Milivojevic, while discussing the business that the south London club did during the Premier League’s most recent international transfer window which closed on 5th October.
In terms of departures, only one player left the Eagles on a permanent deal during the most recent international transfer window, with Alexander Sorloth joining RB Leipzig last month.
While reflecting on the business that the south London club did during this transfer window on the latest edition of the Exiled Eagles podcast, Seltzer indicated that he would have been open to Palace captain Milivojevic joining Sorloth in departing from the club, had the Eagles received an offer of around £10m for the player.
The podcaster said: “One I would say that we could probably look at if it happened: I wouldn’t have turned down, say, £10m for Luka. We’ve got players that can come in there.”
Would you take £10m for Milivojevic?
YES
NO
TIF Thoughts…
As per Transfermarkt, Milivojevic is a natural defensive midfielder who is also capable of playing in the central midfield position and judging by these comments from Seltzer, it seems as though he believes that Palace have got enough cover in these positions to warrant selling Milivojevic.
However, according to Transfermarkt, Palace have only got two natural defensive midfielders and two natural central midfielders in their first-team squad, which it may be fair to say isn’t a great amount of squad depth in these positions.
Perhaps the podcaster believes that the Eagles could have signed an adequate replacement for the Serbian for £10m or less, however, we feel that Milivojevic has performed well at Selhurst Park since joining the club in January 2017 for £13.59m.
In the Premier League, the midfielder earned the sixth-highest overall WhoScored rating (6.94) of any Eagles player in the 2016/17 season, the seventh-highest overall WhoScored rating (7.01) of any Eagles player in the 2017/18 season, the third-highest overall WhoScored rating (7.19) of any Eagles player in the 2018/19 season and only eight Palace players earned a higher overall WhoScored rating than Milivojevic (6.67) in the 2019/20 season.
While this indicates that he performed worse last term than he did in previous campaigns with Palace, it may be fair to say that his WhoScored rating for last season is still a respectable one and we feel that these ratings do indicate that he has been quite consistently reliable throughout his time at Palace.
As a result, we don’t think it would’ve been a great idea for the south London club to sell the £14.4m-rated man during the most recent international transfer window, especially for a lower transfer fee than they signed him for in 2017, with just under three years remaining on his current deal.