Crystal Palace striker Connor Wickham joined Sheffield Wednesday on a loan deal until the end of the season, as confirmed on the Championship club’s official website last week.
The 26-year-old has already had two loan spells with the club and Palace boss Roy Hodgson admitted that he’s happy with his current options in attack, so wanted the striker to go to a team where he is likely to play more.
As quoted on Football London, Hodgson said:
We have got Cenk Tosun, Christian Benteke coming back from injury and Jordan Ayew, so that is three centre forwards.
So if I had kept him [Wickham] back to keep up the numbers and be covered, if we really are unlucky and get two or three people going down, I might have given him another five or six months without the chance to play.
The opportunity came up for him to go to a Championship club, a good Championship club, where I am hoping that he won’t just train with them every day, but he will get into the team and start to do well, and then hopefully, because he is still a Crystal Palace player, we might see the Connor Wickham that people may have seen four years ago.
Unfortunately in the time I have been here, I haven’t seen that, because most of his time has been ruined by injury.
READ CRYSTAL PALACE VERDICT
Tosun arrived on loan from fellow Premier League side Everton in January and with four strikers in the squad, we feel it made sense for Hodgson to let Wickham leave, rather than continue to not pick him.
The striker had played only 90 minutes of Premier League action for the Eagles this season (Transfermarkt), so we believe the loan is great for him because it offers him the opportunity to be playing more first-team football.
As Hodgson rightly pointed out, Wickham has been plagued with injuries in recent years, having missed 79 matches from the start of the 2016/17 season until the end of 2018/19 campaign.
This shows that the forward needs to get back into the rhythm of playing regularly and we believe this loan move gives him the best chance of doing exactly that.
