Tony Mowbray outlines when Elliot Embleton and Jenson Seelt could make their Sunderland return

Tony Mowbray says Elliot Embleton and Jenson Seelt are edging closer to making their injury comebacks.

The pair were pictured in training on Thursday in a sign of their positive progress, though they have not yet rejoined full training.

Embleton has been absent since last December with an ankle fracture and ligament problem, while summer-signing Seelt suffered a recurrence of a minor ankle injury while making his debut during the club's pre-season tour of the US.

Both are clearly short of match fitness due to their lack of action during the pre-season programme, and so will need both time on the training ground and some minutes in the U21 environment before they can be considered for a return.

As such, Mowbray is hopeful at this stage that they could return around the end of the international break in September.

That of course will depend on their progress over the next week or two.

"Elliot and Jenson did the warm up with us, so they're doing alright," Mowbray said.

"At the moment they're doing a warm up and then they go off do their own individual stuff. They're not doing the tackling and competitive side of things.

"I've asked Elliot a lot how it's feeling and he tells me it's great. I don't think he's far away, I think he'll start training with us at some stage next week and then he might need a half a game for the U21s. He would certainly need a week to ten days of training with us before he can do that, though. So maybe a couple of weeks, which is good as it gives us another attack-minded footballer.

"Jenson feels as if he's only a couple of weeks away, which is a positive. But I'm not sitting here thinking they'll be OK for Rotherham, they're going to be a couple of weeks and maybe after the international break by the time they've got some U21s minutes and trained with us enough to be ready for the first team."

Lynden Gooch is expected to make his return from a minor hamstring injury against Rotherham next weekend.