There are a lot of names being banded around and a lot of press speculation as to transfer targets and I'm sure a lot of us have thoughts on individual targets (I certainly enjoy the speculative game of this time of year). But, with our knowledge that Roy has pretty much said he wants to bring in three, a Goalkeeper, Central Defender and Striker, it seems to me that the amount paid on one transfer affects the others. Which opens up an interesting `game`. Which set of players should we buy? Yes, I know this is overly simplistic and doesn't account for wages etc but we are limited in what we can sort of know, and we can assume wages are roughly proportional to transfer fees. Here is a list of players we have been linked with, with estimated prices. I don't think we can spend the £40 mill we spent this time last year, so I think our budget is more likely to be around £30 mill. So for £30 mill what set of 3 players would you buy?

GK
Bartosz Bialkowski 4 mill
Kevin Trapp 10 mill
Arnold Origi free
Vicente Guita 3.6 mill

CD
Ibrahim Amadou 16 mill
Sebestien De Maio 3.6 mill

ST
Omur Niasse 10 mill
Khouma Babacar 15 mill
Danny Ings 15 mill
Michy Batshuayi 22.5 mill
Karl Toko Etambi 10 mill
Moussa Dembele 20 mill
Leigh Griffiths 10 mill

It actually becomes very hard but for me I think I'd go Vicente Guita GK 3.6 mill, Ibrahim Amadou CD 16mill and Omur Niasse 10 mill = 29.6mill

Good game just I actually don't know anything about these players so wouldn't know where to start.

There's a few I wouldn't waste our money on though.

Niasse being one of them.

Maybe Danny Ings if he was £5m not £15m.

Not interested in Babacar or Batshuayi.

Why another center back? I'd save the money (especially not pay 16 million for Amadou)

Edited by mattteo (06 Jan 2018 5.48pm)

Because we're one injury away from throwing Damo back in there?
At the moment CB is a bit of a must do. Kelly is doing well and Tomkins is great but if anything happens to either of those two it's Riedewald, TFM or Damo, none of which fills me with much confidence. Even with Sakho back we'd still need cover.
If it is Amadou then it looks like he can also play DM which would be great cover for the run in.

I would focus on the striker as this is obvisouly the weakness area - perhaps going for Dembele on the list. Here I think we can spend the money.

For Central Defence - I am not sure we actually need to buy but perhaps look into the loan market for the additional cover to take us until the end of the season.

For Goalkeeper - perhaps look at this long-term. I think Hennessey/Speroni are good to take us to the end of the season but like the CD position we are weak if we get a long term injury. I would actually suggest poaching from the England U17, U18 or U21 sides - perhaps bring Freddie Woodman back ? You could do this for the Central Defence position as well rather than spend a **** load of cash.

Remember we do actually have a palace member of the U18 (Nya Kirby - it'll be good to few a few minutes on the pitch from him)

and Michael Phillips and Wan-Bissaka in defence

Mr Cadbury's Parrot says "Hello"