DENNIS CIRKIN is poised to return to the Sunderland squad for tomorrow’s game with Leicester City, but Dan Ballard is one of “four or five” injury doubts for the meeting with the Championship leaders.

Cirkin has been sidelined since early September with a hamstring injury, but the full-back has stepped up his training programme significantly in the last week or so and was part of a Sunderland Under-21s side selected to face Hibernian in a behind-closed-doors friendly at the Academy of Light this afternoon.

Provided he comes through that unscathed, he will be part of the squad that will attempt to inflict only a second league defeat of the season on Leicester at the King Power Stadium tomorrow night.

“Dennis is playing this afternoon at the training ground,” revealed Black Cats head coach Tony Mowbray. “There’s a few lads going to be playing for 45 minutes – Dennis, Ellis Taylor, Nectar Triantis, Luis Hemir. The plan is that they’ll play for 45 minutes, then jump on the bus to Leicester with us.

“Hopefully, Dennis comes through it okay. If he does, and there’s no reaction, then hopefully he can come and sit on the bench. He’s chomping at the bit, yet we have to be mindful of the fact that he hasn’t really done anything for seven or eight weeks. He’s trained alright this week though.”

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With Aji Alese still a few weeks away from a return of his own, Cirkin’s comeback is a major boost to Mowbray, who has been fielding Niall Huggins at left-back in the absence of his main two options for the position.

Huggins will remain in the role for the game against Leicester, although Mowbray admits he will have to make a late decision on a number of players who suffered knocks in Saturday’s 2-1 defeat at Stoke City and have been unable to fully train in the last couple of days.

Most significantly, Ballard did not train this morning, having returned from international duty with Northern Ireland with a muscular issue that kept him out of his country’s defeat to Slovenia last week.

“Is everyone fit and well? No,” said Mowbray, who can at least welcome Dan Neil back from suspension tomorrow. “It’s a quick turnaround, and there’s four or five players who haven’t trained today, but who we hope can play tomorrow. There’s lots of knocks and niggles, and there’ll be a few fitness tests before the game. We can only pick fit players, so we’ll have to see who’s okay.

“Dan’s one of the players that hasn’t trained since he came off the pitch, so we’ll have to wait and see whether he’s able to pass a fitness test.”