Stoke City boss Alex Neil gives big injury update ahead of Sunderland clash - with Lynden Gooch latest

Lynden Gooch is in contention to face his former club on Saturday after Alex Neil confirmed that he had returned to training.

Gooch has been absent from Stoke City's recent fixtures with a hamstring issue, after a similar problem caused him to miss some of Sunderland's early fixtures this season.

Gooch made the move to rejoin Neil on deadline day as he entered the final year of his Sunderland contract.

Like Sunderland, Stoke City have been beset with injury issues in recent weeks but speaking at his pre-match press conference on Thursday, Neil said that he expected to have a stronger squad to select from this weekend.

"Better news," Neil said.

"We’re hoping that the likes of [Andre] Vidigal should be fit, Ryan Mmaee hopefully should be fit, Enda Stevens has been training with us this week, Ki-Jana Hoever has been training with us, Lynden Gooch has been training with us. We’ve got a lot of players making their way back."

Defender Michael Rose is also expected to be available, although Ben Wilmot, Tyrese Campbell and Lewis Baker all remained sidelined through injury.

Stoke signed former Newcastle United defender Ciaran Clark over the international break, but Neil has hinted that he is unlikely to make his debut this weekend.

"Well, the difficulty he's got is that from last season until now he’s not been playing football and I think, once you get beyond 30, that starts to become a little bit more difficult," Neil said.

"You need to keep ticking over.

"He’s in good shape though, he's trained with the lads yesterday and today so we're hoping he's not too far away."