MARC McNULTY will miss Sunderland’s trip to Rochdale tomorrow, but Jack Ross is confident Aiden McGeady’s foot injury has healed sufficiently for the winger to play three games in a week.

McNulty was forced out of Saturday’s 2-1 win over Portsmouth after damaging his hamstring, and will not be involved at Spotland.

He is also set to miss this weekend’s home game with AFC Wimbledon, and could be sidelined for up to two weeks.

Ross said: “Marc will miss tomorrow evening. He possibly might miss a couple of weeks, but he was pretty positive today, so he could be back a bit sooner than expected.

“It’s a fairly minor hamstring injury. He’ll miss tomorrow evening, then we’ll see how the rest of the week goes for him.

“Duncan (Watmore), Ethan (Robson) and Glenn (Loovens) are also out, but there’s nothing new other than Marc.”

McNulty will be replaced by either Will Grigg or Charlie Wyke at Rochdale, and McGeady is also set to line up tomorrow now that his foot injury is fully healed.

The Irishman sat out a large chunk of pre-season in order to protect the foot that troubled him throughout the second half of last season, but his condition has improved significantly in the last few weeks.

In terms of match fitness, he is still playing catch-up, but Ross no longer feels he has to limit his involvement because of injury concerns.

The Sunderland boss said: “He’s pretty much there now. He missed a lot of pre-season, so it’s really just a case of him catching up on general match fitness now.

“His foot has actually been good, really good. It was still giving him a bit of concern in pre-season, that’s why he missed a lot, and we were a little bit concerned about whether it had settled properly.

“But in the last few two or three weeks in particular, it’s been really positive, and there’s no suggestion that won’t continue to be the case.

“That’s good, because then it’s just about him getting fully back fit, and to be honest, he’s probably just about there now in terms of match fitness. He’s been edging back to that, and because Aiden is such a talented player, we’ve really been doing that in games rather than rehabbing him for an extended period of time.”