Niall Huggins has effectively been ruled out for the remainder of the season with Alex Neil revealing the young defender has picked up a 'bizarre' injury during his rehab follwing a back problem. The 21-year-old defender has made just four appearances for the club and has not played since the end of September, with then-boss Lee Johnson explaining that the summer signing had suffered a stress fracture of the back.
That issue was originally expected to keep him out until January, but a setback in December meant that timescale was extended to March. But Johnson's successor Neil has now explained that former Leeds United man Huggins has suffered a heel injury, and he does not expect him to figure in Sunderland's play-off campaign.
"Unfortunately, Niall has got a really strange injury - it's highly unusual," said Neil. "He's basically damaged his heel doing his rehab coming back [from the back injury]. It was not through contact - I don't know exactly what it is, it's a really bizarre injury.
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"I think at the moment he is going to find it difficult to feature this season."
Even if Huggins does recover in the coming weeks, his long absence means he will be well short of match fitness, making it highly unlikely he would be in contention for a first-team place. While Huggins' season appears to be over, Neil remains hopeful that Aiden McGeady could be involved in the run-in.
McGeady has been sidelined since November with a knee ligament issue and, while he was pictured in training at the Academy of Light at the beginning of the month, Neil says it has been a stop-start recovery. He said: "The difficulty with Aiden is that he has had a knee issue that has sort of grumbled on.
"There have been shoots of recovery where we thought we were getting him closer, there have been signs that he was coming back out onto the grass with us and taking part in sessions, but then there's been maybe a small setback where he doesn't feel that it is quite right. That's turned into a little cycle at the moment and we are trying to end that, so that we can get him on the grass and be relatively consistent with his training and hopefully get him involved.
"It's just a matter of time, hopefully."
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