CHRIS MAGUIRE could be back for Sunderland sooner rather than later.

The crowd favourite suffered a broken leg, a fractured fibula, in the win over Gillingham on February 19 and was expected to be out for between six to eight weeks.

But the attacker is doing all he can to be fit as quickly as possible and, while the date at Wembley against Portsmouth in the Checkatrade Trophy final on March 31 may be too soon, he is privately targeting that as a possible return.

“Chris is only three weeks into what was estimated as a six to eight-week period. I think he believes he will be sooner than that,’’ mused boss Jack Ross.

“He's running already on the treadmill at 50 per cent, which is pretty quick in terms of where he was at but we've still got to manage him properly through it. Of course you add in the match-fitness side as well.

“I do believe he will be back quicker than we said originally because I think he'll push himself. Certainly we hope he'll be back for the last part of the league games.’’

One player out of the first-team picture at the Stadium of Light is Bryan Oviedo.

A regular in the first-half of the campaign, the last outing for the left-back came in the win over Man Ciry Under-23s in the Checkatrade Trophy on January 22.

He’s since had a deadline day move to West Brom collapse and then been in and out of training because of injuries – two calf issues and a knee problem.

The Costa Rica international won’t be involved against Walsall today.

Ross said: “He's been back training for the last couple of days but over the last two or three months he's not trained that regularly, which is not ideal.

“I've got a squad of players who, by and large, are training every single day.

“Time passes and I don’t think he's played since the end of December. If it had been for a long-term injury people would have looked at it in a different way than ad it been niggles but the reality is it's impacted upon his ability to train and be available for games. We'll just have to assess that on an ongoing basis.

“I put a lot of stock on what happens in training and sometimes there are players who don't always get the reward, like off the top of my head Alim (Ozturk) and Dylan (McGeouch), for example. Alim hasn't played a lot over the course of the season and Dylan in more recent times yet I could have zero complaints about what they do all the time and how they keep forcing me to consider them.

“A lot of times I hope opportunities open up for them because of the way they keep doing that.

“We've got enough in our squad that have proven they are ready to go should they be needed.’’