Crystal Palace eyeing Ligue 1 right-back as replacment for Joel Ward

The Evening Standard is today reporting that Crystal Palace are interested in signing Marseille defender Hiroki Sakai who could be available for around £12 million.

With Joel Ward’s contract set to expire at the end of the month, Palace are in need of a new right-back for the upcoming season and Sakai is currently top of Palace’s shortlist.

A Jekyll and Hyde season for Palace

The 2017/18 season for Crystal Palace was very much up and down. They started the season by picking up zero points from their first seven league games.

During those seven games, Palace would also fail to score a single goal, a new league record.

However, once Roy Hodgson took over Palace’s form dramatically improved, Hodgson picked up a 2-1 win vs Chelsea in his first game in charge of Palace.

From their, Palace grew in confidence and would finish the 2017/18 season in 11^th place, not bad considering they lost their first seven games and were clear favourites to go down.

Experienced defender

However, Hodgson will be keen to ensure Palace enjoy a much better start to the 2018/19 season in order to improve on last season’s 11^th place finish and signing an experienced defender like Sakai would go some way to doing that.

Sakai moved to Hannover from Japan in 2012 for a fee of around £1.08 million. He would play 102 games for Hannover, scoring two and assisting four in that time.

Marseille would then snap up Sakai in 2016 on a free transfer.

Since signing for the Ligue 1 side, Sakai has made 90 appearances scoring one and assisting seven.

Sakai also played a key role in Marseille getting to the 2017/18 Europa League final, however, injury would keep him out of the semi-finals and he was on the bench for the final.

The right-back is a very capable defender and if Palace do sign him he would be a great addition to their squad.

Related: Crystal Palace ‘have held talks’ with Arsenal target Lafont.

What a job Roy Hodgson has done at Crystal Palace

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