Niall Huggins is still some way away from a return to full training as he continues his rehab work, says Alex Neil. The defender joined Sunderland from Leeds United last summer and had made just four appearances for his new club when he suffered a stress fracture of the back last September, which was the start of his ten-month injury nightmare.
During his recovery from the back problem Huggins suffered a heel injury which Neil described in March as 'bizarre', and his rehab has been punctuated with setbacks. The 21-year-old is working his way back to fitness and travelled with the Sunderland squad to Portugal for pre-season last month, although he spent his time working with the club's medical staff rather than training with the first-team.
"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," Neil said this morning. "He has been really unfortunate with injuries that have come along, and he has had a few setbacks along the way in his rehab.
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"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."
Huggins is Sunderland's only significant injury concern at present, with the Black Cats having gone into the new Championship season with a virtually fully-fit squad - and Neil says tthe club's fitness staff deserve the credit for that. He said: "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."
Leon Dajaku was not involved in Sunderland's season-opener against Coventry City last weekend as he had been ill for part of pre-season, which meant he had not been able to take part in the final friendlies. But the German winger has trained this week and could be in contention for tomorrow's trip to Bristol City, although whether he will be able to force his way into the squad is another matter.
Neil said: "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."
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