Are Williams and Leigh the two?

Lee Bowyer talked about two new players joining this week after the game yesterday. The one in the crowd was Crystal Palace’s Jonny Williams (photo courtesy of @KGtopsnapper), although throughout his long injury lay off’s the Welshman has gone a little bit Conor McGregor!

Williams is a ball playing midfielder, and a very good one at that, but has had devils luck with injuries. Charlton have a few times been around the periphery of signing the 25-year old, but we were always deemed a division too low. Williams has hardly played in five seasons for Palace and has been on loan to Ipswich Town, Nottingham Forest, Milton Keynes and Sunderland. The last two whilst they were in The Championship. He has still been a regular for Wales during that period though.

Williams signed a contract extension at Selhurst last summer, but has played just 76 minutes in a League Cup game earlier this season since doing so. Before that his last game was for Sunderland in March. Williams is fit, but unlikely to be match-ready, but if he can tie us over until we get some players back he would be a very good addition, and you’d think he would be looking for new challenge.

The second player is suspected to be defender Greg Leigh. A left back who came through Man City’s academy. He was on loan at Crewe, but turned down a permanent offer to sign for Bradford. He was at Bradford just a season, but again turned down a contract extension and moved to Bury making his debut two years ago against us. He played 88 times for Bury and garnered a very good reputation.

Again he turned down a new contract, this time after Bury’s relegation, and moved to Holland and currently plays for NAC Breda in the Dutch top tier. Breda have a long standing development plan with Man City, but possibly Leigh sees a loan move to Charlton as a way back to England.