Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish has defended the club’s decision to keep Ismaila Sarr after Liverpool showed late interest in him during the summer transfer window.
Sarr was one of several Palace players attracting interest from clubs in England and abroad.
The Palace top scorer was first wanted by Turkish champions Galatasaray before Liverpool entered the race to sign him.
They submitted a £50 million bid for the Palace star, but it wasn’t enough to convince them to do business.
Parish later revealed that the offer was well below Palace’s valuation of the Senegal international. The timing of the bid also made a potential deal difficult to complete.
“It’s unfortunate with Ismaila, but that wasn’t really a situation that was of our doing,” Parish said (via The Athletic).
“A club (Liverpool) came in and, with the amount of money they bid, they couldn’t seriously think in that market it was going to get done at that level, and then they didn’t come back in for him.
“If you’re selling players for £90 million and then you want to bid us half of that for the replacement, it’s fine, you can do it. I’m not criticising anybody for doing it. But it’s not going to happen.
“You could understand Ismaila would have liked to go, and if it wasn’t five days before the end of the window and the money was right, then we would have tried to facilitate it.”
Sarr’s agent, Diomansy Kamara, publicly criticised how Palace handled the situation after the window closed, while Sarr removed references to the club from his social media accounts.
However, Parish urged fans not to allow the situation to affect their relationship with the player.
