Jordan Willis has left Sunderland and has an offer to train with League One strugglers Forest Green Rovers. The centre-back suffered a serious knee tendon injury playing for Sunderland at Shrewsbury Town in a League One fixture in February 2021, and later suffered a recurrence of the problem during surgery.
His contract with the Black Cats ran out last summer but he had remained at the Academy of Light to continue his rehabilitation, although Sunderland boss Tony Mowbray - who previously managed Willis at Coventry City - suggested it was unlikely he would earn a new deal with the Wearsiders and would be better off moving elsewhere in search of the regular first team football he needs to prove his fitness. Now Mowbray has confirmed that Willis has moved on, and says the 28-year-old has an offer to train with Forest Green.
He said: "I've had a few conversations with Jordan, and he has left the club now. I had Jordan at Coventry and he was very, very, good for me there - he was very athletic, and then he got a move to a huge football club, Sunderland.
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"While I didn't see him play for Sunderland, I knew what he would bring - athleticism, power, speed, he's a really, really, good lad - until he picked up some bad injuries. I feel he is at a level now. He ended up training for the last couple of weeks with the first-team, and I feel that he needs to go and play now and get his career started again, get in a team, go and train with the first-team every day and show the manager that you warrant a place in his team.
"It was a tough ask for him to do that here, particularly with the central defenders and the right full-backs that we have - there didn't seem a very obvious route for him. He had an option to go and train with Forest Green - I don't know whether he's doing that or not - but he had that option.
"He's fit, and he just needs to get his football career going again. He needs to overcome the mental scars of a long injury through repetition of training for a while, and once he has done that he will hopefully get into the game scenario and forget about injuries and become the best version of himself."
Willis joined Sunderland in the summer of 2019 and made 60 appearances in all competitions for the club, scoring two goals.
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