Sunderland fans will be tentatively dreaming about a Premier League return already, with the early days of Regis Le Bris’ new regime already bringing the feel-good factor back to the Stadium of Light.
That’s the case even after the Black Cats surprisingly lost to Plymouth Argyle 3-2 last time out in the Championship, but the Wearside outfit will still be chuffed with their second place in the league standings at this moment in time, after only finishing in a dire 16th spot last season.
If Le Bris was to seal an unbelievable promotion, it would be the first time Sunderland would be competing at the very pinnacle of English football since the 2016/17 campaign, when the Black Cats finished rock bottom of the pile.
Around that same bleak time in the club’s recent history, many a transfer misfire would take place, including a deal to land Conor Wickham, who never lived up to any of the outlandish labels that were put above his head when donning a Sunderland strip.
Wickham's transfer to Sunderland
Wickham joined the Sunderland ranks in 2011 heralded as the next big thing, having made waves for his boyhood club Ipswich Town from a very young age.
A far younger and rawer Wickham, compared to the weathered 31-year-old in the here and now, would bag nine strikes from 37 Championship games during his final campaign at Portman Road, before winning himself a bumper £12m move to the Stadium of Light.
He never quite fitted in at Sunderland, however, away from winning accolades such as EFL Young Player of the Year when in more comfortable surroundings in Suffolk, with outrageous tags given to him during the course of his dire Black Cats stay not helping his cause either.
In 2014, after a torrid couple of seasons on Wearside saw him only bag six goals across three Premier League campaigns, former Sunderland great Niall Quinn even decided to state that Wickham could be ‘Sunderland’s Alan Shearer’ despite his previous woes.
A rare purple patch – which saw him net five goals from three games during the 2013/14 campaign – did see the one-time Tractor Boys wonderkid win a sole Premier League Player of the Month award, but his inconsistent performances would then get the better of him again after this.
He bowed out from his playing days with the Black Cats with a lacklustre goal total of 15 from 91 appearances, before later lining up for other top-flight sides and EFL clubs such as Crystal Palace and Sheffield Wednesday.
Now, the 31-year-old striker finds himself without a club, with retirement a growing possibility.
Wickham's career since Sunderland
It’s fair to say the ex-Ipswich prodigy never managed to quite reach the levels expected of him from when he first burst onto the scene at Portman Road, with the injury-prone centre-forward becoming somewhat of a journeyman after his Sunderland stay.
Wickham would even end up playing all the way down in League One with Milton Keynes Dons, Charlton Athletic and Forest Green Rovers, after walking away from Sunderland, but never exploded into life fully for any of his new employers that gambled on taking a punt on the former England U21 hotshot.
Crystal Palace
50
11
Sheffield Wednesday
30
11
Preston North End
2
0
MK Dons
15
1
Forest Green
20
9
Charlton
4
1
Cardiff City
12
1
Looking at the table above, Wickham has found it hard to hold down a club, with his last venture in football coming with Cardiff City, where he managed to net just one goal from 12 forgettable appearances.
Wickham will look back on his career wondering what could have been different, with his wretched luck with injuries not exactly helping things, but the insane hype surrounding him from such an early age also must have had its major downsides.
He did score a remarkable goal for Forest Green during his stint there (above), but Wickham would have loved to have scored screamers like this in the very top division on a regular basis, to try and somehow live up to his billing as Sunderland’s own Shearer.
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