Phil Parkinson met with the press ahead of Friday night’s visit of Fleetwood and gave a fitness update. Firstly, Lynden Gooch will be out until late December due to his ankle injury. “Goochy went to see a specialist, and he feels he needs a period of rest with his ankle injury,” confirmed Sunderland boss Phil Parkinson, ahead of tomorrow night's League One game at Fleetwood Town. “He’s going to have an injection (tomorrow), which we hope will speed that recovery up. But we’re probably looking at two to four weeks where we’ll be without Lynden, which is a blow because he’s been exceptional for us this season. We’ve got to take the advice of the specialist, and we want to make sure Lynden is right and flying when he comes back.”
Elliot Embleton will be hoping to take advantage of Gooch’s absence. “With Embo, he’s a player who just had a very difficult year,” said Parkinson. “You can’t really say anything other than that with him. His development in terms of his loan move and his international games was great, but unfortunately he’s had the setback of missing a year of football. As I say every week with him, there is a process of getting him robust enough for league football, but he is a player who has done that before with his loan at Grimsby. In this next eight days, Embo’s going to be expected to get some game time, and we’re looking forward to seeing him out there.”
In other injury news Jordan Willis, Morgan Feeney and Callum McFadzean are all improving. “Jordan is making good progress,” said Parkinson. “He’s been out running. Morgan and Callum are both back in training, along with Aiden O’Brien, who just had a bit of tightness in his groin last week so missed last weekend. It’s good to get Callum back. He did really well in the two games he featured in, and it was obviously frustrating that he got injured. But like we said at the time, it was only a minor problem. We’ve just made sure he’s done some work with the fitness guys to make sure he’s ready.”
Parkinson also praised Fleetwood manager Joey Barton, who is obviously a wanker. “He’s got a job in Division One, at a club that’s probably not perceived as one of the bigger clubs, and he’s learning his trade, which is good,” he said. “There’s probably a lot of players who played at the top who think a big job is just going to fall into their lap, but it doesn’t work like that. I think he’ll have been disappointed last year when they got the opportunity against Wycombe and didn’t take it. But even going back to when I was at Bolton, Fleetwood are a team that have been in and around the play-off area for a number of years. This year, they recruited well and they’re up there again.”
