Reading suffer double injury issue ahead of Watford and Sunderland clashes

The Black Cats have injury issues with Daniel Ballard, Ross Stewart, Dennis Cirkin and Niall Huggins currently sidelined for the foreseeable future.

Reading, however, have also suffered some problems of their own. New signings Mamadou Loum and Naby Sarr are highly unlikely to play next week against Watford, with issues that could extend to the midweek game against Sunderland.

Sarr has a calf issue picked up against Sheffield United last week and Loum injured his groin during training on Friday and has had an MRI scan to assess the damage.

Speaking after Reading’s 2-1 win over former Sunderland head coach Alex Neil’s Stoke City, manager Paul Ince said: "We lost Naby Sarr and Mama [Mamadou Loum] yesterday in training- big players. He trained and felt his groin, 10 minutes into training.

"If I’m being honest with you, if he would’ve played, I would’ve played Shane [Long] on his own. That’s not disrespectful to Lucas [Joao] it’s just that he played against Millwall and Sheffield United having just come back from injury so it’s about sharing the load.

"I probably got away with that to be fair. It worked well at times with two of them up front. He’s going for an MRI scan tomorrow and see what the problem is, he could be out for a couple of weeks along with Naby.

"Gradually we’re getting people back but it’s still not enough."