£9m man has started only once since Everton talks collapsed, disaster for former Tottenham target

During the summer, amid interest from Tottenham, Aston Villa and Newcastle United, the winger’s head coach opened up on his desire to ‘return to the Premier League’.

To think, Wilfried Zaha had spent much of those final few years at his beloved Crystal Palace attempting to engineer a move to a club that would help achieve his ambitions of European football and fighting for silverware.

In that sense, Zaha’s time at Galatasaray can be considered a success.

The Palace icon was part of that Galatasaray team which stormed to the Turkish Super Lig title in 2023/24. The Ivorian even scored in a 3-2 win at former employers Manchester United in his long-awaited maiden Champions League campaign.

But, with that itch well-and-truly scratched and Zaha’s performances generally a little hit-and-miss, the chance to spend his remaining peak years in familiar surroundings certainly appealed to the two-time England international.

Wilfried Zaha was an option for Tottenham and Everton amongst others

TBR understands that Zaha was under consideration by Tottenham Hotspur, Aston Villa, Newcastle and newly-promoted Leicester City over the summer. Crystal Palace owner Steve Parish, meanwhile, admits he would have welcomed Zaha back to South London ‘in a heartbeat’.

Palace held talks, while negotiations with Everton collapsed. Wolves and West Ham were linked with Zaha too at one point.

And when Galatasaray coach Okan Buruk admitted that his 32-year-old forward had his sights set on a ‘return to the Premier League’, the expectation was that England’s top flight would soon be embracing a prodigal son just one year after he closed that Crystal Palace chapter.

But, as The Standard explain, red tape soon made that attempted homecoming far more difficult than it otherwise might have been. Zaha, they say, would have had to pay income tax both in the UK and Turkey due to the fact he had spent just one year in Istanbul.

And, with those interested suitors already less than pleased about a £9 million valuation for a man approaching his mid-30s, in came Lyon, signing Zaha on a straightforward loan deal for the remainder of 2024/25.

A deal which, since then, has backfired pretty badly.

Zaha’s Lyon spell has been a massive disappointment

Zaha has started only one game in Lyon colours. In all competitions, he has appeared just six times with twinke-toed youngsters Malick Fofana and Rayan Cherki ahead of him in the pecking order. Former West Ham winger Said Benrahma is struggling too, but even he is featuring far more regularly than Zaha at present.

To make matters worse, the relationship between Zaha and head coach Pierre Sage did not exactly get off to a flying start. According to RMC Sport, he missed a training session at the start of October, Zaha then dropped for each of Lyon’s next two Ligue 1 fixtures.

“I had a good discussion with him, regarding the problems we encountered,” Sage said at the time. “The idea is not to punish for the sake of punishing. He needs to become aware of what is expected of him at the club.

“I told him that we had signed Wilfried Zaha, so we would like to have Wilfried Zaha. For the moment, [these problems] have nothing to do with his abilities as a player, but rather his ability to live with the team.”

With the January transfer window now only six weeks away, it would take a pretty remarkable turnaround for this Lyon spell to be anything other than a disappointing blot on Zaha’s copybook.

Fortunately, with the likes of Everton, Leicester and his adoring Crystal Palace on the lookout for any attacking inspiration they can get, perhaps that Premier League return is not off the table just yet.