BRYAN OVIEDO still has a part to play in Sunderland’s season despite the ongoing fall-out from the collapse of a proposed deadline-day move to West Brom.
Oviedo was expected to head to the Hawthorns on a season-long loan last month, but despite the full-back having travelled to the Midlands on deadline day, the proposed move collapsed when the Baggies were unable to reach a financial agreement with Sunderland officials.
Oviedo returned to Wearside, but a calf problem means he has been unavailable in the last two weeks.
The Costa Rica international has returned to full training in the last couple of days, and while he is unlikely to feature in tomorrow’s League One game with Gillingham, he remains part of Jack Ross’ first-team plans.
Ross said: “He’s been injured. He only trained on the day of the (Accrington) game. He’s been injured with his calf, and he hadn’t trained, or at least he’d trained very little, between deadline day and now.
“He’s been there for me all season. Obviously, it wasn’t an ideal situation for him, the way it panned out (on deadline day) and from a planning perspective, we were probably planning that our squad was going to be one less.
“But nothing has changed in terms of how I view him and how important he could be for us. At the moment, we can only select ten outfield players to start and 16 outfield players in total, and we’ve got a healthier squad that we’ve had all season.
“That coincided with the new players coming in, so it means at the present time, there’s going to be four or five players every week that aren’t involved.”
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