16 With less than a week before pre-season training begins, Crystal Palace’s threadbare squad remains in desperate need of strengthening. Of course, they must first secure their new manager, with moves for both Nuno Espirito Santo and Lucien Favre both falling through just as the club thought they had found their man. But they cannot afford to wait too much longer before launching into the transfer market and reinvigorating a squad which has had relatively little by way of investment since Sam Allardyce’s spending splurge in January 2017, when Jeffrey Schlupp, Patrick van Aanholt and Luka Milivojevic arrived for a total of around £40 million.