Connor Wickham: The saviour we’ve all been waiting for?

It was in the 64^th minute against Liverpool that we finally saw Connor Wickham return from injury after a layoff of a couple of months. The fans’ response? Relief.

It’s not really hard to see why if I’m being honest, and to demonstrate it I need do nothing more than repeat one awful statistic: yesterday was the first time in the 12 premier league games so far this season that our “striker” (Bolasie started there yesterday) has scored. A recognised striker is yet to score in the league at all and two of our joint second top goalscorers in the league are Scott Dann & Joel Ward. The problem we are facing is obvious; for all of our good performances (and there have been many) we continue to struggle to turn 1-0 losses into draws, or 1-0 wins into convincing 2 or 3 goal wins.

The answer is supposedly Connor Wickham. But is he really up to the job?

Let me start with why I think we need to be cautious.

In my first blog I brought up the fact that last season Connor Wickham accrued more yellow cards (8) than goals (6) in his 40 appearances in all competitions and since then, quite amazingly, that statistic hasn’t changed. Overall in his time at Sunderland he managed just 15 goals in 91 games – the reality is that his goal scoring record is certainly nothing to shout about, and for a striker that is a trait is less than desirable.

He started his career at Ipswich before moving on to Sunderland in an £8.1 million move and it’s fair to say that since then his career has stalled somewhat – even he admitted it was “time for a fresh start”. He’s earnt an incredible amount of money out of football at such a young age (people forget that he is only 22) and with the fame and fortune comes the worry that football has been put to one side. What hasn’t helped his reputation was that he was part of a Sunderland side which came in for widespread criticism about the ‘drinking culture’ that supposedly existed/(exists?) and he’s been pictured out at nightclubs with bottles of champagne with many thousands of pounds.

However, in defence of Wickham’s scoring record, during his time at Sunderland he was used as a bit-part player for much of his time there and often played out of position. Even when he started (which was just over half of his appearances in the premier league) he was often forced to operate from the left hand side of midfield. Of course he’s going to struggle to score goals – whoever you are it’s hard to score goals from the wings, let alone from the wings playing out of position.

Perhaps what will determine his success or failure at Palace is his ability to fit into our one striker system. Our current crop of striking options haven’t cut the mustard when it comes to fitting into our system: Campbell didn’t manage it, Gayle put up a better fight but also struggled and Murray was sold over the summer. To me the progression is clear, Wickham was brought in to play that lone striker role, to be a powerful presence on the pitch alongside chipping in with a decent return of goals. As crazy as it sounds it’s my opinion his success will be determined on the former – if he can become a striker that holds the ball up well, creates chances and links up play then I don’t think his goal return is as important. Obviously he needs to find the back of the net sometimes – he is a striker and that’s what he’s paid for, but I think that his addition to the team can bring so much more than that.

Most importantly Connor must be given time to settle, his time at palace has been stop start and we must give him and the team time. At the moment I think he is our best hope and I sincerely hope that he is the best thing since sliced bread, but I certainly won’t be surprised if he’s not. I can only hope he’s not another great English prospect that never realises his potential because he got too much too soon.