Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish has confirmed that the club would like to bring Conor Gallagher back to the club when his loan spell expires at the end of the season.
Gallagher has enjoyed a terrific campaign at Selhurst Park, registering eight goals and three assists - form that has led to him breaking into the England squad ahead of the World Cup later this year.
The Chelsea midfielder also recently won the Eagles' player of the season award, with Parish jokingly suggesting that the club's supporters have a 'whip round' to pay for his transfer fee at the ceremony on Tuesday evening.
The Palace chairman has now fleshed out these tongue-in-cheek remarks, saying: "Conor’s future and that decision lies not with us but with him and Chelsea. They're the people that have to decide.
"Once they decide what their choice is, they know where we are and what we want. We're not going to pretend any different but we've got to respect them as a football club because he's their player.
"At the end of the season he goes back to Chelsea and they'll make their decision. Based on that, we'll be there and if everybody thinks it's the right thing for him to come back then we would love it.
"If it doesn't work out, we wish him all the best as well."
Listen now to 90min's brand new podcast, Talking Transfers, with Scott Saunders, Graeme Bailey & Toby Cudworth. On this week's agenda is Erling Haaland's transfer to Manchester City, Ralf Rangnick recommending Konrad Laimer to Manchester United and the latest on the contract situations of Youri Tielemans and Sadio Mane.
Parish added that if Palace could not re-sign Gallagher - either permanently or on loan - they would look at alternative targets.
"Obviously with Conor, we've got to see what we can do there. He's going back and we've got to either replace him or see if we can get him back," he said.
"We've got one or two other situations that are well-documented so keeping what we've got here is an important thing. Then we've got one or two ideas of where we think we can add to make a difference, give ourselves something different, get even better at keeping the ball and be a bit more damaging when we've got it.
"There's no limit to our ambition at the football club. We'll obviously look to bring some of the youngsters through that we've got who are very good and we start every year dreaming of being Leicester."
For more from Matt O’Connor-Simpson, follow him on Twitter
Source : 90min