Over the past seven days Palace have been linked with Peter Odemwingie, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Arouna Kone, Joe Walsh, Alex Baptiste, Joel Campbell, Nathan Redmond, Grant Holt and Yohan Mollo. Not to mention about seventy other people with legs.

Sadly, less has materialised for the Eagles than for Jermaine Easter unmarked in the penalty box.

At least, that’s how this week’s All of the Time was going to begin.

But then remarkably, out of literally nowhere, two fairly large chunks of red and blue news arrived at once.

Firstly, huge newsflash on the friendly front, as far as a friendly can be huge news anyway. Palace announced a matchup against Dulwich Hamlet!
Just kidding, I'm of course referring to the apparently arranged tie against Inter Milan. But I won’t dwell on that meaningless blockbuster as it’s still not been officially confirmed.

Instead, switching to the second revelatory headline of the week (admittedly also still unconfirmed - but allegedly nailed on) Palace have not only signed Dwight Gayle from Peterborough, but they look set to splash an awful lot of cash on the 22-year-old.

The Peterborough Telegraph reports the fee for the striker to be around £6million, whereas more rational sources are indicating the figure is half that.

Whatever his value, which I'm not sure will ever be clear given the add-ons in place, it's exciting to see Palace finally enter the transfer market. Quite probably at the same time as announcing Jerome Thomas as an Eagle too.

Gayle got seven goals in six games in December, earning himself a Championship player of the month accolade, and went on to net 13 times for The Posh in total.

He evidently possesses great pace and ability while often scoring intuitive, instinctive poacher’s goals, which is an exciting sign of a natural goal-scorer.

Though for relatively big money and a FIVE year deal, from an outside perspective Gayle represents something of a risk.

Yet backing a young player with such potential looks like a move befitting of the shrewd transfer policy under CPFC 2010 – even if the money thrown around is in a different league to usual.

We must remember that we are in a different league now. And it’s hardly Harry Redknapp (or George Osborne) levels of economic stupidity.

If Ian Holloway, Steve Parish et al are happy to spend millions on this guy then it gives me confidence it’s not going to be the gamble it might first have seemed.