Preston North End boss Frankie McAvoy says on-trial striker Connor Wickham has true pedigree

The 28-year-old is currently in on trial at PNE, his contract at Crystal Palace having expired this summer.

The towerg forward was seen warming down with the subs after Saturday’s win over Peterborough United.

Goals are something that PNE head coach McAvoy is keen to add to his squad and he is happy to take a look at Wickham to see if he thinks he can be the answer.

And if not, they will simply just move on.

He said: “Connor is here and we’re having a look at him, that’s where we are with it at the moment.

“We’ll see how he does. He’s available and a lot of targets get put to you around this time. Crystal Palace didn’t renew his contract and there was contact made to see if we would be interested in taking a look at him.

“That’s how it’s come about and we’re delighted to bring him and see how he does.

“He’s not played a lot of games but we need to look at him and see how he does and see if he can come in and fulfil a role here.

“If he can then we’ll look to sign him, if we don’t think he can then we’ll be honest with him and let him know that.

“He was last on loan at Sheffield Wednesday and played 13 games for them and scored two goals.

“Crystal Palace recalled him from the loan and he’s only played a few Under-23s games, and he’s been on their bench.

“So he hasn’t played a lot of football but at the same time he has got good pedigree and we’d be stupid not to take a look at him. He’s shown a couple of good bits that we’ve liked in the last few days in training and we’ll continue to monitor it and see how he progresses.”

North End travel to Morecambe this evening in the Carabao Cup, 7:45pm. The Shrimps beat Blackburn 2-1 in the first round and McAvoy is not taking them lightly.

He will be without Liam Lindsay, Ched Evans and Alan Browne once again due to isolating, and is expected to make changes with a couple of bumps from their game just three days ago too.

“They’re very well organised,” the PNE head coach said.

“Stephen Robinson has done a fantastic job for them, he was a really good manager up at Motherwell – a fantastic manager up in Scotland.

“He’s got really good experience and he’s got his team really well structured and difficult to beat. It’ll be a tough task.

“They managed to turn over Blackburn in the last round. We’re full of confidence and we’ll be going there to try and do what we did against Mansfield and get the victory.”