MICHAEL BEALE is hoping Alex Pritchard could be available for tomorrow’s game at Hull City, despite having been forced to sit out Saturday’s home loss to Coventry.

Pritchard was set to start the game against Sky Blues, but was withdrawn in the build-up to the game after complaining of a sickness issue.

With Luis Hemir also ill, Beale instructed both players to stay away from the first-team squad in an attempt to prevent a sickness bug from sweeping through the whole of the senior group.

The situation has been closely monitored in the last 48 hours, and Beale is hoping Pritchard could be available to line up at the MKM Stadium.

“The problem is when you have two players go down with a sickness bug and you've got so many games close together, you can't take the risk,” said the newly-appointed head coach.

“If it's Saturday to Saturday...but when the games are so close together and you're travelling and staying in hotels, you're trying to minimise the risk of it spreading within the group.”

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Niall Huggins will not be available for tomorrow’s game, with the defender facing what is expected to be a long-term injury lay-off.

Huggins went down in the second half of Saturday’s game, and the reaction of players and officials made it immediately clear that he had suffered a significant problem.

He was treated on the pitch, before being lifted onto a stretcher and carried from the field, and will now undergo a series of scans. However, Beale admits the initial prognosis does not look good.

“We'll have to wait for a scan on it, but the early indications are that it's not a good one,” he said. “The game is really cruel because Niall has been having a fantastic season and certainly doesn't deserve what we might think, which is a long-term injury.

“Our options are obviously a bit limited in the full back areas, we may have to bring one of those guys who hasn't been back long into the team. We know we can move Trai (Hume) across, Aji (Alese) and (Timothee) Pembele played 45 minutes in the U21 game the other night. Dennis (Cirkin) has trained three days this week, we know that Jenson (Seelt) can move out there and obviously we have the option of moving to a back three as we did against Leeds.”

Sunderland (probable, 4-2-3-1): Patterson; Hume, O’Nien, Ballard, Alese; Neil, Ekwah; Roberts, Bellingham, Clarke; Pritchard.