Sunderland headed into the international break with a woeful 4-0 defeat at home at the hands of a resurged Middlesbrough but positive news has emerged from the training ground this afternoon.
The Black Cats will face a struggling Stoke City after the international period away at the Bet365 Stadium, hoping to put the heavy loss to Boro behind them, and it looks as though head coach Tony Mowbray will have a deeper squad to choose from.
The Sunderland Echo have provided an update on the squad following training today at the Academy of Light, with several first-team players back in action, preparing for the game against the Potters next week.
Summer signing Bradley Dack hasn’t featured for Sunderland since before the last international break with a hamstring problem. Mowbray revealed that Dack could have been brought back sooner but they decided to keep him sidelined for a bit longer to ensure a full recovery [quotes via the Sunderland Echo]:
“What we were a bit afraid about is that if he continued playing, he’d have made it worse so we made the call to take him out of the situation for a couple of weeks, let him fully recover and do his strengthening so it is fine when he comes back.”
However, Dack is now back in training with the rest of the squad as well as Pierre Ekwah who was absent for the past five matches through a ‘really bad hematoma and dead leg’, as disclosed by Mowbray two weeks ago. Both men could be fit to take on Stoke City in nine days.
Furthermore, defender Dennis Cirkin and playmaker Alex Pritchard could return to the fold and have been seen training with the team earlier today.
Writer’s View
These four players returning will be huge for Mowbray and for Sunderland as all of them bring something different to the side as well as an abundance of quality.
The Black Cats have done well to get results in their absence but finally seeing the quartet in training is a massive boost for the manager ahead of the remaining fixtures in the run-up to the Christmas period.
