Tony Mowbray delivers Sunderland injury update - including Lynden Gooch and Dennis Cirkin latest

Cirkin was knocked out in the process of scoring Sunderland’s equaliser against Millwall last month, and has continued to experience some symptoms despite initially recovering.

He will be joining in some training over the coming days, but is not yet ready to return to full contact as so is highly unlikely to be in the matchday squad this weekend.

“Dennis, it’s probably still probably a bit up in the air with the concussion protocols,” Mowbray said.

"He’s had a scan and there’s no damage as such, but we have to follow the protocol until he’s fully right.

“He’s still a little bit fuzzy, he doesn’t feel fully right and so at this moment, he might join in bits of non-contact training but nothing where he’s going to challenge for headers or go into tackles. He feels fine within himself but he’s not 100% and he has to be before he can be put back in.”

Mowbray also delivered a positive update on Lynden Gooch, though the full back is more likely to return against Norwich City next weekend.

Gooch will offer some welcome depth in the full back positions, with Niall Huggins also slowly returning to full fitness following a recent injury.

“Lynden’s going to train today,” said Mowbray.

“It’ll be his first day back, although it’ll be a bit non-contact training. When we get to the nitty-gritty of the session, he’ll probably drop out, but he’ll do the warm-up, he’ll do the passing and he’ll do the directional possessions and stuff like that.

“Then, when it gets into teams and trying to score goals against each other, he’ll probably drop out of that. That’ll get built up over this week.

“It won’t be for this weekend [a return to the team], but maybe next weekend, if he can have a full week of proper training, then there should be a chance of him being in contention for Norwich.”

Mowbray is expecting to pick from the same group of players as last week.