Sunderland boss Tony Mowbray makes big injury admission after first-leg win over Luton Town

Sunderland boss Tony Mowbray has admitted that Dennis Cirkin is unlikely to be fit for Tuesday's nights second leg at Luton Town, meaning the Black Cats will again be operating without a natural centre-half.

Mowbray's side produced a brilliant comeback performance to take a slender lead into the trip to Kenilworth Road, and both Patrick Roberts and Alex Pritchard limped off in the closing stages of the game.

Sunderland played the game with Lynden Gooch on the left of a back three, while Niall Huggins made his first league appearance of 2023 from the bench late on.

Mowbray hopes they will recover to take their place in the side, but the head coach is not expecting any defensive reinforcements. Aji Alese has a very outside chance of making the squad, but has no chance of starting the game.

"Aji [Alese] is the closest," Mowbray said.

"He's been on the grass with the physios, but he hasn't played for ten weeks so I think it's pretty unlikely that we're going to throw him in after so long out. If he joins in with the team, maybe he can sit on the bench and if we're hanging on... maybe he can come on to the defence to try and head some balls out, we might think about that.

"It was like that with Niall tonight, my conversations with him have been about him having a really good pre-season and getting some core fitness into his body so that he doesn't break down. And yet he wanted to be involved tonight, and we needed him at the end.

"It's very difficult to put players back in after so long out, so I don't see it happening on Tuesday.

"We don't know at the moment," Mowbray said of Pritchard and Roberts.

"Patrick has come off, which isn't good. Pritchard has taken a kick, so hopefully it's just that it needs to settle down. Hopefully it's one where it's a big bag of ice and he's fine to play.

"Everyone will be in tomorrow and we'll see whose ready, and then we'll train again on Monday."