Pardew: Bolasie´s ´heart and soul´ no longer with Palace

Crystal Palace manager Alan Pardew admitted Yannick Bolasie’s “heart and soul” may no longer be with club as the winger reportedly nears a big-money transfer to Everton.

The Eagles were beaten 1-0 on Saturday by West Brom at Selhurst Park, where Bolasie came on midway through the second half to little effect.

While Pardew said no deal had yet been done for the forward, he does expect the 27-year-old to complete a switch to Goodison Park.

“Well the situation with that is that it’s not quite done. The chances are that it will get done, but we’ll have to wait and see,” said Pardew, who believes the defeat merely outlines the same issues that his team – who have won just twice in the top flight in 2016 – had last season.

“Sometimes as much as I love him and the fans love him, if his heart and soul is not with us then we have to exchange goodbyes.

“I think our fans are frustrated a little bit with it especially because he’s so creative for us, but if he does go we have to try and replace him with somebody who can be as good as he is for us, and hopefully score more goals.

“But even with him in the side our record of scoring goals is not great. We need to address that because it was evident again that we lack a cutting edge. If we had scored first I think we’d have won.

“The fixture list throwing up West Brom as your first game is never going to be easy. They camp the midfield and break the ball down and better teams than us have struggled against West Brom, and of course they have their strengths from set-plays.

“I think overall we played well and we had a big chance at 0-0 when Wilfried [Zaha] should definitely have scored.

“So for them it was a carbon-copy win and for us it just highlights our problems and that we need to put it right in the transfer market. Hopefully we will.”