Roy Hodgson confirms Crystal Palace talks over Kyle Walker-Peters

There have been rumors for weeks about a potential loan — or even sale! — of Tottenham Hotspur academy graduate and right back Kyle Walker-Peters. The latest club to express an interest was said to be Crystal Palace, who are still looking for a suitable replacement for Aaron Wan-Bissaka.

Today, Palace manager Roy Hodgson, speaking in a pre-match press conference, confirmed that the Eagles are interested in taking Walker-Peters on loan until the end of the season.

“I know that the discussions are taking place, and [sporting director] Dougie Freedman is working very hard on that aspect. I’m optimistic and hopeful that we can get Kyle here. First hand, it was being discussed as a loan.”

Jose Mourinho was then asked about Hodgson’s comments in his own press conference, but while he didn’t deny knowing something about it, he was pretty cagy about how possible a KWP move would be, deflecting it onto chairman Daniel Levy.

“If Mr Roy told that I am not going to deny. But I don’t know, of course I believe in him and if he believes that it is because Crystal Palace are trying to do it, working on it and I will wait for news coming from my boss.

“It is good to know that Mr Roy is open about it and doesn’t try to hide, so if they have that objective of course I will be informed by my people.”

The (unsourced, unreliable) scuttlebutt I’m hearing is that Spurs still consider KWP a young, good English talent and would probably want £20m for him in a sale, but I have no idea how feasible that would be for a guy who has now been more or less ignored by two straight Tottenham Hotspur managers. Either way, this is definitely the end of KWP at Spurs. He’s at the age where he needs to play or risk seriously damaging his future career. And he’s clearly not going to get those minutes at Tottenham.