Crystal Palace co-owner Steve Parish admits he wasn't ready for the inflated transfer market prices.
Parish admitted even he was caught out by football's inflated transfer market when ex-manager Tony Pulis championed the arrival of defender Scott Dann.
"Scott Dann is a fantastic player. He's a much, much better player than I thought he was, I must admit," said Parish.
"Credit to Tony Pulis: he always liked him when he was at Birmingham.
"There's value in the market place everywhere if you look at it. Maybe sometimes you have to find it.
"That's the difference: we have to find it. It's a very imperfect transfer market.
"If you're not playing for six to eight months or happen to be playing in a bad side, you just get forgotten about and nobody wants you.
"It doesn't mean you're a bad player. We've had to look at value from the first point when I came into the club.
"We know right now there's a certain type of player. If you look at someone like Martin Kelly, he has an England cap, he's been through some injuries like a lot of younger players do.
"He hasn't been playing regularly for Liverpool and England but you don't suddenly become a bad player overnight.
"We figure that it's a risk worth taking. We can't go and pay £5-10million for players in those types of positions."
