In his early days with us he tended to play deeper and wider and wasn't very effective. He started to look really promising when he got into the box more.

There were those games against WBA and Sunderland away when he picked up a brace in each game, the header in the semi-final, 2/3 assists in our 5-1 win over Newcastle. I really believe the lad has what it takes if he can just stay injury free.

anyoned know anything about the recovery of pape and connor?

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There's a very good player in there.

He really needs a run of games not only from a footballing perspective but from a confidence perspective in terms of being injury free for these games.

Thing is he will only play in place of Benteke and not with him one would have thought so unless Benteke gets injured for a few games, Wickham is unlikely to get a decent run in the side.But of course Mr De Boer might see it differently !

In the vein of blaming everything on Pardew, I wonder how much of his fragility at Palace was down to lack of fitness and conditioning. When playing, he certainly looked capable of scoring 15 goals a season easily, he just needed playing time to get his touch back because he was a bit of a pinball at times.

What he did in the FA Cup semi and final showed how much of a handful he can be. Here's hoping FdB and his staff get Wickham properly fit and ready for the rigours of a full season. Being Big Chris' understudy should help.

We don't do possession; we do defense and attack. Everything else is just wa**ing with a football.

Definitely a good player.

It's a squad game so if you are employing a system that is one up top, you need a similar player waiting in the wings for injuries, suspension, lack of form etc. If he avoids injury he'll get games without a doubt. Last season if we had lost Benteke for a run of games we wouldn't have had a target man type to replace him with. We are still short an option up front but it isn't as bleak as it could have been. Can't see us signing someone for 20 million odd though when Wickham is going to be available and certainly have other areas that need looking at first. For a start I see Ward as back up right back, not first choice. That said, Mandanda will be starting the season with us it seems so hopefully if he's as good as we hoped he would be and his head is in the right place, we may have solved the goalkeeper problem too.

Edited by Littlebogreek (26 Jun 2017 3.09pm)

Weird to think that Kai Kai is only 2 years older than Williams, seems like Williams has been around forever.

I'd love to be wrong about him but we've been saying this every year for about 5 years now. Kai Kai is the one that really interests me - doesn't seem to have set the lower leagues alight but often something just clicks with players, lets hope that's him this year.