Sunday 22 July 2018

Crystal Palace eyeing ambitious Yaya Toure move

Unknown July 22, 2018 FOOTBALL, SOCCER, SPORTS

According to The Sun, Crystal Palace are interested in signing former Manchester City and now free agent, Yaya Toure.

However, Palace may face competition from West Ham who are now being managed by Manuel Pellegrini who had a good relationship with Toure when the pair were at City.

Experienced midfielder

Yaya Toure has had a very lucrative career around Europe. He had a spell in Greece with Olympiacos for whom he played 29 games in which he scored three and assisted one.

Toure also played for KSK Beveren and AS Monaco. But it was at Barcelona Toure really made his name as a top midfielder.

He played 118 games for Barca, in which time he scored six and assisted eight. Toure would then be sold to Manchester City in 2010 for a fee of around £27 million.

Toure became somewhat of a club legend at City. He played 316 games, scored 79, assisted 50 and won many trophies and could now be set for a switch to Palace.

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND – MAY 09: Yaya Toure of Manchester City shakes hands wtih Josep Guardiola, Manager of Manchester City after he is subbed off during the Premier League match between Manchester City and Brighton and Hove Albion at Etihad Stadium on May 9, 2018 in Manchester, England. (Photo by Gareth Copley/Getty Images)

A Jekyll and Hyde season for Palace

The 2017/18 season for Crystal Palace was very much up and down. They started the season by picking up zero points from their first seven league games.

During those seven games, Palace would also fail to score a single goal, a new league record.

However, once Roy Hodgson took over Palace’s form dramatically improved, Hodgson picked up a 2-1 win vs Chelsea in his first game in charge of Palace.

From there, Palace grew in confidence and would finish the 2017/18 season in 11^th place, not bad considering they lost their first seven games and were clear favourites to go down.

Now, however, Palace are keen to strengthen their squad this summer in order to make sure they have a much better start to their 2018/19 campaign.