Sunderland boss issues injury update with Pierre Ekwah, Bradley Dack and Dennis Cirkin latest

Sunderland will be without Dennis Cirkin for at least a fortnight but Tony Mowbray is hopeful that both Bradley Dack and Pierre Ekwah will be fit to face Blackburn Rovers at Ewood Park on Wednesday night.

Dack and Cirkin were both absent from the squad as Sunderland fought back to secure a 3-1 win over QPR on Saturday afternoon.

Ekwah, meanwhile, had been a major doubt for the game with a dead leg and had to come off in the 11th minute after a challenge exacerbated the problem.

Mowbray is confident that there is no significant damage and that as such, the midfielder will be back in action very soon.

His biggest concern is at left back where both Cirkin and Aji Alese are currently sidelined. Niall Huggins started this game and Mowbray was pleased with his performance, saying his decision to replace him with Patrick Roberts at the break was purely to try and capitalise on QPR being reduced to ten.

"Pierre hasn't trained much this week, he'd been struggling with a dead leg," Mowbray said.

"He trained on Friday and so we thought he would get through the game because it wasn't a strain or a tear, it's just a bang he took on the thigh.

"The problem was he got a bang in exactly the same place a couple of minutes in, he tried to run it off but he couldn't so we just got him off.

"We'll get some heat on it, give it a massage and hopefully it'll be alright for Wednesday.

"Bradley just has a slight strain, he's very hopeful of being ready for Wednesday. We could have brought him but we didn't think that was worth taking that risk today, so he's got a very good chance for the Blackburn game.

"Dennis is a different kettle of fish, he's got a hamstring strain and is going to miss a couple of weeks at least and probably a touch more.

"That's a blow to us of course, but Niall came in today and did very well for us. We just felt that with the way the game was going, the heat and that they had ten men, we could get Roberts on for that bit of creativity."

Blackburn Rovers were 2-1 winners over Middlesbrough ahead of Wednesday night's game.