In a recent fan survey carried out among Eagles fans, 27-year-old James McArthur won the Palace fans vote, with 53% agreeing that the Scottish international was the best signing for Crystal Palace last season, beating Wilfred Zaha – who also was voted with an impressive 45% of fans support.
Despite spending the first half of the season on the bench after joining from Wigan last August for a cool £7 million, McArthur showed his worth and quickly earned praise from the fans when stepping in as back up for Jedinak who was on international duty and hit with injury. He played a key role in midfield and scored two goals in just 33 games, improving his form every time he played, running all over the pitch and showing his dedication. This determination and improved form made the midfielder a close runner up to Scott Dann for Player of the Year.
With McArthur’s impressive style and fast progression as a Premier League midfielder under Pardew, it was inevitable that other teams were going to show an invested interest. The first report was that newly promoted Norwich City were considering an £8m bid for McArthur, which is not surprising considering Alex Neil knows McArthur personally after playing for him previously at Hamilton before he joined Wigan in 2010, and has spoken openly of his development in recent months. It has been reported that an £8 million price tag may be too hard to turn down when the club have reportedly set their sights high – in terms of some star players with a hefty fee attached to them, such as Yohan Cabaye.
Could selling a growing star to replace with a new face that needs time to gel with the team – (when we have such a fierce opening to the season) be a risky move for the club?
Other clubs that have been rumoured to be keeping tabs on McArthur – who has an impressive 19 caps for Scotland, are West Ham and Everton. This gossip could be easily spurred from when Everton manager Roberto Martinez was hunting McArthur before he came to Palace in 2014. Martinez saw potential in McArthur early on in his career when he signed him for Wigan from Hamilton – but other than this fact there are no other discussions linking the midfielder with a move to Everton.
A source close to the club earlier in the week told Goal : “The club is braced for bids, but the gaffer (Alan Pardew) is determined to keep him.
“There is no doubt the player is happy but the interest elsewhere means they need to try and tie him down to a new deal to put off the other clubs.”
Many Palace fans will be hoping that the news surrounding McArthur signing a new contract is true due to his impressive performances this season – especially in his last few games of the Premier League campaign. Even when captain Jedinak came back, he struggled to make the first team as Pardew could not drop McArthur who was having such a positive impact.
Thankfully due to our impressive 10th place finish and a nice cheque from the Premier League, we are not in a position where we still need to worry as much about selling key players to fund other investments, like we have been forced to in the past. We hope to keep our first team players at least and build up a quality bench where we can then make tactical changes when we come up against different teams, and not have to panic so much when we lose a key player to injuries and referee decisions.
Alan Pardew has already hinted at his ambitions for another top half finish next season. I think we will all agree that McArthur has earned a new contract after helping with our huge success and we all look forward to watching him build further on his growth alongside Ledley and Jedinak going into the third consecutive season in the Premier League for Crystal Palace.
