Guehi went about it in ‘the right way’ and didn’t get his Liverpool move. Maybe he should have pulled an Alexander Isak? How grim.
Marc Guehi is a 25-year-old Premier League captain who has one year left on his contract to ease a ‘dream’ transfer next summer on more favourable terms, playing for a club which has won two trophies in six months and set for European football this season, in a World Cup year in which he’s likely to be first choice for Thomas Tuchel’s England. He will be just fine.
Guehi agreed part of his medical ahead of his proposed move to Liverpool after a £35m fee was agreed, but his departure from Selhurst Park was blocked despite a deal sheet being in place for his transfer to be signed and sealed after the deadline when Crystal Palace’s move to sign Brighton’s Igor Julio as his centre-back replacement fell through.
READ MORE: Transfer Deadline Day, summer 2025: Follow it LIVE with F365…
We hope he’s not too disappointed. He shouldn’t be. And we’re delighted he’s set to stay at Crystal Palace, partly because we’re big Oliver Glasner fans and fear he may have packed it in had Guehi been sold without a suitable replacement lined up, but also because this feels like the window in which big clubs have muscled in to pick off talent from so-called lesser Premier League sides. It’s nice to see the little guy win – or at least not lose – one.
But it’s also undeniably grim that he’s been denied a move by going about things in ‘the right way’ while Liverpool announce another deadline-day signing who quite clearly and publicly hasn’t.
There’s evidently something in the water at Palace to nourish and develop ‘good eggs’. Eberechi Eze trained, played and excelled for them right up until his move to Arsenal was all-but sealed and Guehi scored a stunning goal in a 3-0 win for the Eagles less than 24 hours this move to Liverpool collapsed.
READ MORE: Eze does it perfectly compared to Alexander Isak and his strikingly bad behaviour
We imagine there will at most be a brief reference to his frustration at his failed move to Anfield when he’s first asked about it before Guehi vows to focus on his football and give his best for the club which has given him the platform to be in a position to make that move while paying him handsomely to kick a ball around a pitch for a living. It’s the kind of guy he is.
He has every right to be annoyed with Liverpool – ‘why wait until the afternoon of deadline day?’ feels like a very reasonable question to ask – and thoroughly irritated by a world in which Alexander Isak and his fellow transfer window ‘rat’ get what they want by downing tools while he’s continued to represent his club to the best of his ability and has been punished for it.
If he too had been a pr*ck, Palace would have signed a centre-back in advance and Guehi would now be a Liverpool player.
We hope the irony wasn’t lost on the Newcastle fans who pinned their ‘ISAK IS A RAT. WISSA IS A GEORDIE. TOON TOON.’ banner outside St James’ Park for all to see after Yoane Wissa refused to play for Brentford to force his last-gasp move to the North East. Maybe it was.
But we really hope their sulking in protest isn’t seen as vindication by others that their course of action, quite clearly wrong on a moral level, is right in that it grants the greatest chance of sealing a ‘dream’ move.
At least Guehi will still likely get his, and will retain the love and respect of Palace supporters and the wider footballing community if he does, while Isak and Wissa’s reputations have tarnished, at least until they score a few goals for their new clubs and we all forget how they came to play for them in this infamously fickle and increasingly soulless industry.
