Parish insists Liverpool's £50m Sarr bid was never going to succeed with five days left

Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish has firmly rejected any suggestion that Liverpool’s £50million bid for Ismaila Sarr was a realistic offer, telling The Athletic the deal was “never going to happen” given the timing and the fee involved.

Liverpool submitted the offer for the Senegalese winger with just five days remaining in the summer transfer window, but Palace turned it down without a counter-negotiation. Liverpool did not return with an improved bid.

“A club came in and, with the amount of money they bid, they couldn’t seriously think in that market it was going to get done at that level,” Parish said. “If you’re selling players for £90m and then you want to bid us half of that for the replacement, it’s fine, you can do it. But it’s not going to happen.”

Parish acknowledged that Sarr, 28, would have wanted to make the move but argued the circumstances made it impossible. “If it wasn’t five days before the end of the window and the money was right, then we would have tried to facilitate it,” he added.

The saga was complicated by the public intervention of Sarr’s agent, Diomansy Kamara, who made a series of critical statements about Palace’s handling of the situation. Sarr himself removed all references to Crystal Palace from his social media accounts during the window. Parish was pointed in his response to the agent’s conduct.

“I don’t care what he thinks in the context of accusations against us,” Parish said. “The good ones would be managing those expectations with the player and not making it everybody else’s fault. It’s their job to get that bid earlier. It doesn’t help anybody when you go in the media and make unfounded accusations.”

Turkish club Galatasaray also pursued Sarr during the window but were similarly unsuccessful in prising him away from Selhurst Park.

Sarr finished last season as Palace’s top scorer with 21 goals across all competitions and added four goals at the World Cup for Senegal. An ankle injury has limited him to just two substitute appearances this season, though he was included in Patrick Vieira’s first squad as Senegal head coach for their upcoming international fixtures.