Sunderland have been handed a major boost ahead of their meeting with Leeds United
Sunderland boss Regis Le Bris expects to have Brian Brobbey at his disposal when the Black Cats host Leeds United on Sunday (October 25).
Brobbey netted a stunning hat-trick against Manchester City last month, only to then miss Sunderland’s next two Premier League games through injury.
The forward was sidelined with a hamstring problem and played no part as Sunderland were beaten by Brighton & Hove Albion and AFC Bournemouth.
While the 24-year-old will not make a return for Sunderland’s Europa League battle with Lech Poznan this evening (October 22), he could feature against Leeds.
Brian Brobbey latest
Le Bris told the Sunderland Echo: “Brian is in a good place, he has trained with the squad the last ten days more or less, so knowing that it was an hamstring injury it's always important to take care of him and not rush the process so we are on the way. He won't play tomorrow, that's obvious but he should be ready for Leeds.”
The scheduling of a European fixture just days before the visit of Leeds is hardly ideal, particularly for a side struggling in the manner Sunderland are.
Le Bris has remained coy regarding his plans for team selection but stressed the importance of managing workloads.
Regis Le Bris on load management
He said: “I won’t give you the starting XI but the question is, we can't train [much] to be fair so I told you a few days ago that playing in Europe is probably the best training session we can have.
“Against a good team in a nice stadium it's obviously important to manage the game time, the workload, but it's also really positive to play games at that level.
“The next game is always the most important one and so like I said just before, it's important to manage the workload and to get ready for Leeds. It's going to be key and crucial for us but also it's really interesting to play a game at the best level tomorrow in order to get ready for the next fixture. So we try to combine both.”