Everton and Crystal Palace Set for Rare Player Swap

Player swaps are almost extinct in the modern Premier League, relics of a simpler market. Yet Everton and Crystal Palace are on the verge of pulling off one of the rarest moves of the window: a straight trade of starters.

Dwight McNeil is set to leave Goodison Park for Selhurst Park. Heading the other way, Brennan Johnson, Crystal Palace’s £35m forward, is expected to sign for the Toffees. On the pitch it looks like an old‑fashioned swap. On the balance sheet, it’s anything but.

One deal, two transfers

Under Premier League rules, McNeil-for-Johnson cannot simply be logged as a single exchange. It will be recorded as two separate transfers, each with its own fee, each feeding directly into the league’s squad cost ratio (SCR) calculations.

That is where the intrigue really lies.

Johnson arrived at Palace for £35m. To keep the Eagles’ SCR position neutral on this deal, his valuation in the swap would need to sit at around £30m. At that level, the numbers more or less wash through the accounts.

Drop below that, and the picture changes.

When McNeil’s proposed move to Selhurst Park collapsed in February, he was priced at £20m. If this current agreement is treated as a true like-for-like swap and both players are booked at £20m, Palace would be staring at a £10m loss on Johnson in accounting terms. Not a notional hit. A real one, on the books.

Fair market value under the microscope

Any such deal also has to clear another hurdle: the Premier League’s fair market value (FMV) checks.

These rules, along with regulations on associated party transactions (APTs), were brought in back in 2021. The aim was blunt and clear – to protect the league’s financial stability, its integrity, and the competitive balance between clubs.

So the numbers in this swap will not be plucked from thin air. External valuation firms will be drafted in to assess both McNeil and Johnson. They will look at age, recent performance, minutes played, output, and how similar players have been valued in comparable deals.

If the valuations look inflated or suspiciously low, alarms will ring.

Only once those independent assessments are in place will the Premier League step in and make the final call: does this proposed swap sit within fair market value, or not?

On the surface, it’s a winger for a forward, two clubs trying to reshape their attacks. Behind the scenes, it’s a test case in how far modern financial rules allow old‑school transfer ideas to survive.