Sunderland play their third game of their Europa League campaign against Lech Poznan on Thursday

Régis Le Bris has confirmed that Brian Brobbey will not be risked on Thursday night against Lech Poznan but should be able to return against Leeds United on Sunday.

Brobbey has been absent since the international break with a hamstring issue but trained with his team mates ahead of their third Europa League league phase game in Poland. Le Bris says the striker is making good progress and is on his way to a return, potentially clearing the way for some minutes or potentially even a start at the Stadium of Light this weekend.

Le Bris said: “So Brian is in a good place, he has trained with the squad the last ten days more or less, so knowing that it was an hamstring injury it's always important to take care of him and not rush the process so we are on the way. He won't play tomorrow, that's obvious but he should be ready for Leeds.”

Le Bris confirmed that Omar Alderete is available for selection having missed the club’s open training session on Wednesday morning, while Wilson Isidor and Thomas Meunier remain major doubts. The pair did train on Wednesday morning but only did individual work rather than the full session.

“For the others, Omar is fine and from the last game at Bournemouth there are no injuries,” Le Bris said.

“We still have Thomas and Wilson and they are in a good place, we'll see if they can be ready soon.”

The Sunderland head coach appeared to rule out wholesale changes and a considerably weakened side ahead of Sunday’s game, though some rotation is inevitable.

“I won’t give you the starting XI but the question is, we can't train [much] to be fair so I told you a few days ago that playing in Europe is probably the best training session we can have.

“Against a good team in a nice stadium it's obviously important to manage the game time, the workload, but it's also really positive to play games at that level. The next game is always the most important one and so like I said just before, it's important to manage the workload and to get ready for Leeds. It's going to be key and crucial for us but also it's really interesting to play a game at the best level tomorrow in order to get ready for the next fixture. So we try to combine both.”

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