Crystal Palace 'closing in' on 13-goal striker who was on Champions League club's shortlist

Crystal Palace are being tipped to win the race to sign an in-demand striker this summer. The Eagles are said to be looking to add another striker to add extra competition for Jean-Philippe Mateta and Eddie Nketiah.

Palace are going to be playing in Europe in the coming season, whether that’s the Europa League or the Conference League amid an ongoing legal battle with UEFA, and Oliver Glasner is going to need depth in all positions.

As far as the striker chase goes, The Sporting News have reported that Nice striker Evann Guessand is the club’s prime target. It’s claimed the Eagles are ‘closing in’ on a deal and that they are ‘confident’ of getting over the line. Guessand was being tipped with a move to Villarreal, but Palace now look to be favourites.

Nice are reportedly asking for £25million to £30million this summer, and they are sensing the chance to cash in after the 24-year-old scored 13 times and provided 10 assists last season.

Glasner on pre-season win

Palace stepped up their pre-season preparations on Saturday with a 3-0 win over Crawley Town ahead of heading to Austria. Speaking after the game, Glasner said: “Pre-season is going really well. The players are doing really well, very ambitious, with a great work ethic. Now it's important for us to get back into the rhythm, into the patterns and how we want to play, because all the players have been arriving on different days.

“The internationals had a few days more off. Chris Richards will join us for the Austrian camp because he played the [Gold Cup] final with the USA. Marc [Guéhi] had a very small injury, but he also will train with us on Sunday, Eddie Nketiah’s the same. We don't want to take any risks. But I’m really pleased with the performance today. The players did well, scored nice goals, created many chances, next clean sheet, so yes, I think we are on track.”

The Palace boss added: “For us it's important, because fortunately we lost one friendly game: the last one we’d planned on 9th August, but now we play the Community Shield at Wembley! We always want that every single player has played once over 90 minutes in pre-season, to be ready for the start, and that's why we said ‘we'll play Mainz two times, each 60 minutes’, so also having a good physical load, and of course like we did today, today also we said we'll take it as a training session.

“As everybody could see, we pressed 15 minutes very high, then we went back in the midfield block, just as a training, and getting good answers, and this will be the same against Mainz. Then we play Augsburg, with two games so that everybody can have 90 minutes, so of course we have to take care in the training sessions, but I think it's important that every player has the confidence that he's able to play over the full time – and then we're looking forward to the Community Shield.”

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