Niall Huggins is Sunderland's only long-term injury concern, as Leon Dajaku is back in training after suffering with a minor illness.
BAD LUCK
"Niall has still got a lot of work to do to get back to where we would like him to be potentially even involved at the moment. He has been really unfortunate with injuries that have come along, and he has had a few setbacks along the way in his rehab."
BUILD REHAB UP
"We're hoping now that we have got to the bottom of what it is, and we are trying to give him a clean bill of health so he can build up his rehab and there has been a lot of work gone into that process over the last one or two months."
PLANNING
"When you are planning a pre-season, the one thing you look at is that you are trying to get the lads' fitness levels to the optimum but without them breaking down. That's not done by accident, it is done by design. The fitness lads deserve a lot of credit in that we look very fit and none of the players have broken down with anything significant so far."
DAJAKU
"Leon was ill and he trained on the Thursday and the Saturday last week, so he had only done a couple of days and, unlike the rest of the lads, he hadn't done the 90 minutes prior [in a pre-season friendly], because over the last two friendlies all the other lads got 90 minutes under their belts and unfortunately Leon didn't, so that put him a bit behind the curve. But he has trained this week so he is there, but equally the other lads have all trained as well so we will see where we go tomorrow."
