Crystal Palace supporters are not used to this attention. After an unforgettable 2025 that broke new ground for the south London club as they won their first major trophy, the first few weeks of 2026 have thrust Palace into the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Dumped out of the FA Cup as holders by Macclesfield in one of the competition’s biggest shocks, there followed a double bombshell a week later that the captain Marc Guéhi was being sold to Manchester City and the manager, Oliver Glasner, would depart at the end of the season.

Any Palace fans who hoped they could stay out of the spotlight as the January transfer window closed were in for a rude awakening. The saga over Jean-Philippe Mateta’s failed move to Milan dominated proceedings on a largely quiet deadline day, and the fallout from Palace’s decision to withdraw from a deal to sign Dwight McNeil from Everton occupied much of the discourse in the aftermath.

The arrival of Jørgen Strand Larsen from Wolves for a fee that could reach £48m meant Palace smashed their transfer record for the second time in a month, having signed Brennan Johnson for £35m, but there have to be doubts over paying such a price for a player who has scored one Premier League goal this season. Palace have been widely criticised for going back on the McNeil deal, after the winger’s partner accused them of “toying” with the player’s mental health, and did not bring in a replacement for Guéhi.

Johnson has yet to find the net since joining from Tottenham but Glasner, even without McNeil, has a plethora of attacking options for the trip to face Palace’s arch-rivals, Brighton, on Sunday. Evann Guessand is in line to make his debut after the Côte d’Ivoire forward joined on loan from Aston Villa in a deal that could turn his move into a permanent transfer at the end of the season for £26m.

Palace’s chair, Steve Parish, called out by Glasner in the summer – and several times since – for not investing in the squad before their debut European campaign, was forced to act. Many will agree with the Austrian manager that it was about time.

Until the purchase of Strand Larsen, Palace had made a profit on transfers this season after selling Eberechi Eze to Arsenal for £67.5m in August and Guéhi to City for £20m. It was the same in 2024-25 when they sold Michael Olise to Bayern Munich and Joachim Andersen to Fulham for a combined £70m to make a small profit, although the three previous seasons had Palace investing more.

They have the 10th biggest net spend on transfers in the past five years, at more than £200m – a stark contrast to Brighton, the only Premier League club in that period to have made a profit. One big difference has been selling players at the right time, with Brighton having received almost £560m starting from the 2016-17 season compared with Palace’s £286m. An obvious example is Guéhi, for whom Newcastle and Tottenham offered £70m last year. The defender went on to lift the FA Cup, so Parish would argue it was worth sacrificing £50m.

Palace are trying to fund a new main stand mooted for more than a decade but Parish will know that more transfer investment will be required in the summer for whoever replaces Glasner, especially if players such as Mateta, Adam Wharton, Daniel Muñoz and Daichi Kamada depart.

“We had a team who finished third in 1991 and there’s a lesson to learn from the past,” Parish told the Guardian in an interview in September 2015 after Palace had just broken their transfer record to sign Yohan Cabaye from Newcastle for £12.6m. “Ron Noades did so much right in the way he ran this club back then, but my only criticism is he didn’t put his foot to the floor and spend that extra money when he had a chance to kick on. I’ve tried to do that.”

Since then, Palace have spent about £550m on players but that is the 17th most in the Premier League. Brighton, promoted in 2017, have spent £760m. Parish will need assistance from Woody Johnson – the US billionaire who bought a 43% share in the club last year – to make the next step given that fellow owners Josh Harris and David Blitzer have so far appeared reluctant to put their hands in their pockets after buying 18% stakes in December 2015.

The immediate concern for Parish must be keeping his truce with Glasner and ending a run of no wins in 12 matches. There is also the question of how easily Mateta can be reintegrated into the squad after his hopes of joining Milan were scuppered by a failed medical. The 28-year-old must decide whether to have knee surgery and in effect sacrifice his World Cup dream or attempt to struggle on for the rest of the campaign. Mateta’s popularity among the rest of the players means he is likely to be welcomed back, although the same cannot be said for the supporters with regard to a player who was a cult hero a few months ago.