far better than any new signing we could/would have made.

Chelsea may be a good club for developing academy players but I am not sure they are good for those on the brink of the first team.

It sounds like Roy made this point to him, stay at Palace and we will develop you. Olise has been great for us but there have been plenty of games where he disappeared I doubt Chelsea would be so patient with his off days so he might not play as regular as he would with us.

One more point

Its a good point. They do develop some, but a lot also fall by the wayside. They also seam to have a few that break through, play a bit and then end up surplus (trevoh chalobah).

It also feels like they never have 100% trust in anyone.

e.g. Connor must have been excited about the new season this time last week, survived the chop and destined to play a bigger role. Then they spuff £170m+ 2 new CMs.

And I guess that's the thing, if fit we can offer him 38 league games. If he has a bad game, he wont get dropped. And we are highly unlikely (!) to drop £100m on another left winger.

As a core part of our scouting system we should be looking at all their kids and offering them a better path to first team football.

With Ebs, Michael and Marc we have some great examples that this is a place where you can go from the reserves to the England squad in a season.

It would be interesting to know what really went on behind the scenes, but whether we will is doubtful. 24 hours ago he was gone having looked for a while as though he was wanting to be gone, despite it being obvious that he would only be a bit part player at Chelsea, but a star with us. The new contract wasn’t invented yesterday. It must have been drawn up and available for a while. Was he under pressure from agent or family?

Now we hear Chelsea pulled the deal for fear of being taken to a Tribunal. True, or just PR? Is Olise disappointed we scuppered his dream or delighted to be resuming his bromance with Eze?

Is anything being said by any of the players on social media which might offer a clue? Watching the body language when we see them all together could too.

Does it matter? Probably not, he is a professional footballer after all. Getting Eze to sign a longer deal now becomes the biggest priority.

For the avoidance of doubt any comments in response to a previous post are directed to its ideas and not at any, or all, posters personally.

Maybe we should be looking at the younger Olise. The one touted at Chelsea as being the next Reece James.

Usually the BBC Sport Website is fairly circumspect in what it says, so when there was an item with a picture of MO saying that a deal is being finalised for his move to Chelsea I ( like many others) had already consigned him to Palace history.