Premier League side Crystal Palace have attracted interest from three bidders for the stake of co-owner John Textor, with a reported bid of £230m made for his shares in the club.
The Daily Mail reports that Sportsbank, a group of investors from North America, Europe and the Middle East, has tabled a bid worth £230m for his shares. Textor is the chairman of Eagle Football Holdings, which owns the largest stakes in Crystal Palace, Botafogo, RWD Molenbeek and Lyon. His move to take over fellow Premier League club Everton stalled in September.
A deal between Textor and Sportsbank would value Palace at £500m and ally the new stakeholder group with Steve Parish, the current Palace chairman whose standing with the bidders is apparently high.
Premier League: Textor’s exit strategy bearing fruit?
Textor’s evident wish to leave Selhurst Park is close to coming to fruition. He claimed in August that an offer to buy the remaining 55 per cent of shares in Palace fell on deaf ears, pushing Eagle Football Holdings towards the ‘sell’ side of a ‘buy or sell’ scenario. Everton became his focus as a result.
“Several months ago, we hired Raine Group to begin the process of evaluating alternatives, as we were considering two very different alternatives, at that time, either a purchase of a majority interest in Palace or an outright sale,” he said in a statement at the start of the season.
Palace ended 2023/24 in tremendous form in the Premier League but sold Michael Olise to Bayern Munich in the summer. The future of captain Marc Guehi was subject to a distracting transfer saga and the Eagles have spluttered into life this season.
They finally claimed their first Premier League win of 2024/25 last weekend when Jean-Philippe Mateta scored the only goal of the game at home to Tottenham Hotspur.
The win at Selhurst Park edged the Eagles away from the league’s remaining winless trio and out of the relegation zone but manager Oliver Glasner will be aware that only Manchester United have under-performed against their non-penalty expected goals (npxG) by more.
With the joint fewest goals scored in the Premier League, it’s clear where Palace’s shortcomings have been in the first nine games of the season. Wolverhampton Wanderers, their opponents this weekend, have conceded five more goals than any other team.
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Any prospective sale of Textor’s shares would increase the pressure on Palace to maintain their Premier League status this season. Glasner has already demonstrated his ability to get a tune out of the team and kept most of Palace’s key players in the summer.
The Eagles should find their wings sooner rather than later. Listless Southampton, undercooked Wolves and a somewhat green Ipswich Town are the favourites to drop and already make up the bottom three without a win between them.
Crystal Palace meet Wolves in Premier League action on Saturday.
