Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson is happy to ease Connor Wickham back to fully fledged action.

Wickham scored on his return from injury, as he netted the third goal in a 5-0 win for Palace against Dulwich Hamlet in a fundraising friendly. He played 45 minutes after enduring almost two years of injury troubles, since sustaining a serious knee ligament injury in November 2016 against Swansea City.

"The thing about Connor Wickham is one needs to be very careful with him," Hodgson said.

"He was great [against Dulwich], but I don't think it will help Connor Wickham if there are headlines about him, so I'm not going to add to any headlines.

"Nigh on two years is a hell of a long time, and the thing that has pleased me most about Connor is that he has now trained for three solid weeks, he hasn't missed a training session.

"Every day he has been out there and there hasn't been a recurrence of all the injuries that have kept cropping up before.

"That's been shown to me, even more so, from having 45 minutes where it wasn't just playing against team-mates, it was against a good opposition - and he has got through that very well.

"I am just happy for that, but I don't want to put any pressure on him."