Sunderland will conduct a late injury check on three players ahead of their match against Stoke City.
Championship news as Stoke City and Sunderland prepare to meet at the bet365 Stadium.
Tony Mowbray, the manager of Sunderland, will make late decisions on the fitness of Pierre Ekwah, Alex Pritchard, and Bradley Dack ahead of this weekend’s trip to Stoke City.
Dennis Cirkin and Eliezer Mayenda are expected to return to full speed with under-21 appearances in the coming week or two, while Aji Alese and Timothée Pembélé are scheduled to be sidelined for the next three weeks. Dan Ballard is a doubt after suffering a muscular injury while on Northern Ireland service, and Dan Neil is serving a one-match suspension. Midfielders Ekwah, Pritchard, and Dack, on the other hand, will be evaluated today to determine if they can make the traveling team for the bet365 Stadium.
“Training today (Thursday) and tomorrow will be crucial,” Mowbray said. “If they aren’t fully trained by tomorrow, they won’t be playing, and they understand that.” There is training with the physios and training with the entire team. Those mentioned players [Ekwah, Dack, Pritchard] have been doing a little bit of both. So we’ll see what happens on Friday; we won’t put any pressure on the guys.
“We must prepare the team. The unfortunate thing for me is that some of the players have still to return from international duty; they won’t be back until tomorrow, and in my opinion, they won’t be eligible to start. How do you prepare your team if you are unable to train with them?
“So the team is still a little unsure; some players have played three games in the last week and are tired, so we didn’t put them in practice today.” It’s not ideal, and it’s not a complaint since any manager that manages international footballers has that problem. We’ll get started, and whomever is out there training tomorrow will form the team from there.”
