As a starter, no. But if he's a squad player he's immensely valuable.

Sydenham by birth. Selhurst by the Grace of God.

I wonder if Gestede from Villa would be an option ? It hasn't work for him at Villa and he looked last year when at Blackburn our sort of player. Particularly if they wanted Gayle who can't play our system and he needs to move on. Another cheap option for a squad player would be Chris Wood from Leeds, He looked a prospect a few years ago but has stagnated but is still young and we may be the challenge he needs

Victor Ibarbo at Watford who's on loan from Cagliari isn't getting much of a look in due to Igahlo and Deeneys partnership.

It is difficult to gauge whether we should be buying a long term striker in Jan as the market isn't the best at this time. However we run the risk of our season fizzling out if we don't. If this happens we may well be in a less positive position to attract the quality required. Presently we are in a good position in the league with some new investment in the club. I have every faith in the management of bringing in the quality required or a reasonable stop gap until the end of the season if it isn't there. Personally I hope we get the latter.

“ [T]here are known knowns; there are things we know that we know.There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don't know.But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know. ”
—United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld

Personally I think this is what will happen. I believe we have made lots of tentative inquiries about a lot of strikers: Remy, Austin, Slimani, Babacar, Zaza and Batshuyai and that is where the transfer speculation surrounding them has stemmed from and gets somewhat exaggerated in the media. Each has their own merits and pitfalls but I suspect the pitfalls for them suggest that for the financial outlay the club, who tend to be very diligent in only paying big fees for players they are certain will add to the club, will decide to wait until the summer when there will be a clearer picture. Like all of us I hope we do buy a good player now but unless we get one of the above for around the 6 million mark or less we wont sign one of them and may look for either a cheap young potential player or a loan player to act as cover for Wickham and assess how effective CW is over the course of a year at the end of the season and then re-evaluate.

i agree, hence why i think the money will be spent on someone more unknown or from the lower divisions or more likely someone on loan. 6 mill seems to be the number banded about a bit, last night was reported we were going to offer Chelsea 6 mill for Remy and although QPR were wanting 12 mill for Austin in the summer there is speculation it could end up being 6-8 mill for him. I think we have looked at the big targets for around this 8 mill ish price but we aint getting positive responses about getting any of them for this price.