I feel like people are usually excellent at football or excellent at contract law but rarely both.

Except it's not 'Palace trying to save a few quid'. It's having a good sense of business accumen. Not throwing needless amounts of money away. What you see as 'a few quid' is in fact millions of pounds which regardless of how much money you have, is just a ridiculous sense of good business. Ask Leeds & Portsmouth fans where poor business accumen got them when they were in the PL?

Money. The greed of agents. The greed of players etc. We are not the only club struggling to find value for money. West Brom for example have made one signing this summer - Matt Phillips for £5m. They can't find a striker to replace the one that doesn't want to be there. Unless you have millions and millions to chuck at a transfer and really don't care about the value of money like City & Chelsea, of course a transfer is much easier especially when you're a well known and respected club. Convincing a player like Benteke to join little Crystal Palace from mighty Liverpool takes a lot of work and a long time.

Social media just doesn't help. Once the rumour starts you're sitting there waiting. In the old days you would know nothing until the player officially signs.

I don't know why fans continually doubt whether or not the board are working hard in the best interests of Crystal Palace FC. Everything they have done in 6 years has been spot on and even when it hasn't it has always been about what is right and best for the club, not them.

Edited by Stuart Shave (12 Aug 2016 5.26am)

The home and away season starts on Saturday and we don't have Benteke. Why? To save a few quid. Pardew's comment about nothing being done until this weekend reeks of Palace trying to save a few quid in Benteke's wages. We should have had Benteke in the squad three weeks ago and ready to rumble. We better win against West Brom. Pardew can't blame agents for holding out for as much as they can when we do it all the time. Whatever we end up paying for Benteke we will lose his services for possible 3 of the 40 matches we need to get points from - THAT'S not good business. We don't need a poor start to the season where we're languishing amongst the bottom 2 or 3 and where after a few weeks the mindset that we're getting relegated sets in hard, the supporters, club, players start disbelieving in themselves, we end up talking about a new manager, and like last season's second half you just can't shake off the negative voodoo. And why? To save a few bob... Idiots.