Sunderland AFC news RECAP: Everything Alex Neil said about injuries, Ross Stewart, Jermain Defoe and Wigan Athletic clash

We’re signing off from today’s blog, but Neil has also spoken to the written press including our SAFC writer Phil Smith.

We’ll have more build-up ahead of tomorrow’s match on the SAFC section of the Echo website, as well as live coverage from the DW Stadium when Sunderland face Wigan tomorrow afternoon.

See you soon.

Nathan Broadhead has returned to Wearside as he closes in on a return to first-team football, writes Phil Smith.

The 23-year-old has completed his rehab at Everton and trained with his Sunderland team-mates on Thursday.

Read more HERE

I’d probably say I have more problems and less solutions at this moment in time.

I’m not going to obviously divulge who that may or may not be , but we have a couple of ones who we are looking at and hoping we can get them involved for the game.

I’m trying my best but the difficulty we have is we’ve only got 13 games left.

Ideally what we want to do is work the lads that haven’t been playing a lot harder and get them some more minutes.

Equally the lads who have done far too much at this stage of their career, we want to give them a breather.

The difficulty we’ve got is trying to maintain the quality levels in the starting XI and being competitive while having to take some of your better players out or playing players who are not up to speed.

Those variables are really hard to control at this period of time and that’s probably my biggest challenge.

I think you have to take that in context because a few people said that to me. I looked at the team that played that day and a lot of those players are no longer here.

That has no relevance to what is going to happen in the next game.

Equally we played them in the Carabao Cup and we pretty much changed a full side as well, so again that has no relevance to what is going to happen as well.

You can’t really take the comparisons and make them equal.

On Wigan:

I was at the game against Crewe not long ago and have been to see them two or three times this year.

I think they are experienced and guys who know how to get out of this division.

I think there is a pretty good mixture of understanding when to turn the ball and try to play from deep.

They have recruited a squad for them that is going to try and get them out of this division, and added to that in the window with the likes of Magennis coming in.

Different to Sunderland squad:

They certainly haven’t got as many younger players as we’ve got. I think that’s fair.

If you look at the average age of their squad it’s significantly different from ours.

I think every club if you look at them across the board are different in some way, shape or form.

We looked at it for that game.

In terms of it not working, it’s really quite straightforward. If we won the game you’d say it has worked and if we don’t win the game you say it hasn’t worked.

As far as we’re concerned we are obviously a lot more detailed than that.

What you need to bear in mind, and I’ve made this quite clear in the time I’ve been here, Jermain hasn’t played a lot of football, so it’s really tough to then come in and hit the ground running.

We have to try and get as many players up to speed as we can, which is not easy to do when you only have 13 games left.

My take on how he’s feeling he’s making progress, he’s in non-contract training just now and I think that will become contact pretty quickly.

As far as being able to express it on social media, I’m old school and have never been on social media.

I just get on with my job and keep my head down.

That is fine for the modern generation, that’s how they’ve grown up and that’s what they know, but for me it’s not really something I turn my attention to.

On players’ feelings:

I think you have to have an awareness of it.

I think you have to make sure you grasp the sentiment of what’s out there and what’s circulating.

Equally I think there are certain things you need to pay attention to but can also let go with a pinch of salt if you like.

I speak to players on a regular basis and I think that face-to-face contact gives me much more insight to how they are feeling than reading a post if you like.

I can physically see how they are and hopefully face-to-face they can open up and I can see where they are.

I think it is probably repetition more than anything else.

I think it’s about getting good practice in and making sure we’re training well, making sure we’re understanding the situation, going through clips with players and debriefing the game.

I think the difficulty we’ve got is that each challenge is different, the two or three games we have played so far we have approached them in a slightly different manner because of what we have available and what we are playing against.

This week is going to be no different.

In terms of team news, Danny Batth and Lynden Gooch both returned to the matchday squad against Burton following injury setbacks.

Right-back Trai Hume wasn’t in the squad and could return this weekend.

Nathan Broadhead has been stepping up his recovery at Everton and should be able to return to action in the next few weeks.

Luke O’Nien and Aiden McGeady have also been making progress.

We’ll get a full injury update from Neil at 9am this morning.