It’s safe to say Aaron Wan-Bissaka was a surprise inclusion in Crystal Palace’s starting XI on Sunday as they made the ever-problematic trip to Wembley to face Tottenham Hotspur.
The young defender is just 20 years of age and the midday clash marked his first ever competitive appearance for the Eagles, so he was certainly thrown in at the deep end against the likes of Harry Kane, Dele Alli and Christian Eriksen.
But the early signs suggest the future is bright for the first academy product to feature in a league game for Palace in nearly six years, harking back to April 2012 when Kyle de Silva turned out for the South London outfit.
Wan-Bissaka coped with the pressure well as Tottenham dominated possession and the flow of the match; he finished up with the most tackles, second-most interceptions and third-most clearances to his name of any Palace player.
Nonetheless, there is room for improvement, and Wan-Bissaka’s modest pass completion rate of 38%, which was less than goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey’s, will raise a few eyebrows, especially considering the youngster has often been fielded as a winger for Palace’s U23s and youth teams before. Clearly, Wan-Bissaka has the technical quality and instinctive flair to be more consistent on the ball – he just needs to discover the composure to produce it at Premier League level.
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But that will come with more experience in the top flight and the real positive for Roy Hodgson is that he appears to have unearthed something of a gem amid Palace’s injury crisis. Wan-Bissaka certainly looks capable of plugging a gap for a few weeks while the Eagles’ more senior personnel return from the sidelines and amid the most competitive relegation scrap in Premier League history, that could well prove to be the difference come the end of the campaign.
