Roy Hodgson has acknowledged Michael Olise could be about to move on from Selhurst Park.
The Eagles winger is currently out injured but that hasn’t put off rumoured suitors Chelsea and Manchester City weighing up bids to snap up the 21-year-old.
That could potentially cost the Premier League big guns more than £50million, with Hodgson admitting the Eagles might be hard pressed to keep hold of their prize asset.
The SE25 boss said: “Clubs are circling around him and we are going to have a fight on our hands to make sure he stays with us.
“We had two outstanding wingers who were almost the best in the league – Michael Olise on the right side and Wilf on the left. We don’t have Wilf anymore.
“We’ve lost five senior players from last season and brought one in, Jefferson Lerma.
“He’s good and we’re happy to have him in, but there is still that hole of five senior players in the squad, two of whom were two of the real stars of the team.”
Hodgson gave his views after Palace faced Sevilla in a friendly at the weekend in America.
He went on to suggest more needs to be done by chairman Steve Parish and sporting director Dougie Freedman if Palace are to have a squad good enough to deal with the challenges of another Premier League campaign.
The Eagles manager said: “There’s a bit of work for the chairman and sporting director to do between now and the end of August, because the team we put out today was, in our opinion at this moment in time, our best team.
“But we don’t have the strength behind that team that we had last year.”
