The “physical” ace Crystal Palace sold too soon is now as valuable as Olise the well-travelled star could have been brilliant under Glasner.
The future is starting to look a bit brighter for Crystal Palace fans after a Premier League season that has, for the most part, been a disappointment.
A mixture of thumping defeats and boring displays finally saw legend of the game Roy Hodgson leave his position as manager of the club last month, and the incredibly exciting Oliver Glasner came in to replace him.
The Austrian coach has seen success in his home country with LASK and in Germany with Wolfsburg and Eintracht Frankfurt, winning the 2022 Europa League with the latter.
While it will take some time before he can replicate a success of that magnitude with the Eagles, a return of four points from his first three games isn’t the worst way to start.
The team might not be entirely set up to play the kind of progressive and attacking football he was known for in the Bundesliga. Still, players like Eberechi Eze and Michael Olise should be able to thrive under his tutelage, although he likely would have loved to have a former player who was probably sold too soon and is now worth just as much as the Frenchman.
Michael Olise’s valuation at Crystal Palace
Palace signed Olise from Reading in July 2021 for a relatively modest fee of £8m after impressing in the Championship, scoring seven goals and providing 12 assists in just 46 appearances for the Royals.
It was a tough journey to reach the Premier League for the Hammersmith-born gem, one that had included rejections from Chelsea’s Cobham, Arsenal’s Hale End and even a very short stint with Manchester City’s academy setup.
However, once he was a part of the team, he was thrown into the deep end and made 31 appearances across the Premier League and FA Cup for Patrick Vieira in 2021/22, scoring four goals and providing eight assists in the process.
The following season saw his goal tally fall to just two – including this brilliant freekick – in 40 games, but he provided 11 assists to compensate and ended the campaign with a goal involvement every 3.07 games.
This season has been an interesting one for the 22-year-old as he has been blighted with not one but two hamstring injuries that have limited him to just 11 appearances for the team, although in those 11 games, he has scored six goals and provided three assists, meaning he has averaged a goal involvement every 1.22 games.
This unbelievable form, combined with his age and the fact that he signed a new deal with the South Londoners last summer, has seen CIES Football Observatory value Olise at around €40m, which is about £34m.
The fee a club would have to actually pay to get the tricky winger out of Selhurst Park is likely much higher than that, but Olise’s current CIES valuation matches that of a former Palace player, one that perhaps should have been kept at the club.
Alexander Sørloth’s valuation at Crystal Palace
The player in question is Norwegian number nine Alexander Sørloth, who joined the Eagles in the 2018 winter transfer window from Danish side FC Midtjylland for just £9m.
The then-22-year-old was having a brilliant season for the Danish giants at the time, scoring 15 goals and providing nine assists in 26 appearances before making the move to England, where, unfortunately, it just didn’t work out.
In that first year, he made just four fruitless appearances for the Eagles before losing his place in the team, and in the following season, he joined Belgian side Gent on loan in the winter window after scoring one goal and providing one assist in 13 appearances for Palace.
His failings in English football clearly impacted his confidence, as he could only manage five goals and three assists in 22 appearances for the Belgian side.
It looked certain that Steve Parish and Co would have to bite the bullet and sell the Norwegian for a loss at some point due to his poor run of form. Still, they opted to send him on one more loan to Turkish Süper Lig side Trabzonspor for two years in the 2019/20 season, a decision that paid dividends a year later.
