Tony Mowbray set for late injury check on Sunderland trio ahead of Stoke City clash

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.

 

 

Mowbray said: “Training today (Thursday) and tomorrow will be key, if they aren’t fully training by tomorrow they won’t be playing and they understand that. There’s training with the physios and there’s training fully with the team. Those players you mention [Ekwah, Dack, Pritchard] have been doing a little bit of both. So we’ll see on Friday, we won’t put pressure on players.

“We have to prepare the team. The sad thing for me is that we haven’t even had some of the players back yet from international duty, they won’t be back until tomorrow and in my mind, they won’t be able to start. How can you prepare your team when you can’t train with them?

“So the team is still a little undecided, some players have played three games over the last week and they are fatigued, so we didn’t put them into training today. It’s not ideal, and it’s not a moan because every manager with international footballers has that. We’ll get on with it, and whoever is out there training tomorrow, we’ll put the team together from there.”