MICHAEL BEALE is delighted to have Patrick Roberts back in his squad for tomorrow’s Tees-Wear derby with Middlesbrough, but has warned the Sunderland winger he faces a major battle to reclaim a place in the starting side.

Having been absent since suffering a calf injury during Sunderland’s draw at Rotherham in late December, Roberts has returned to full training this week.

The 26-year-old will return to the squad at the Riverside, but could well find himself on the substitutes’ bench given Abdoullah Ba’s impressive performance on the right of midfield in last weekend’s win over Stoke City.

With new signing Romaine Mundle able to play on either flank, Beale finds himself with a number of different options on the right-hand side despite the departure of Alex Pritchard, with Roberts facing a fight as he looks to force his way back into the starting line-up.

“Paddy coming back is great, but he’s got a fight on because Abdoullah looks in a really good place at this moment in time,” said Beale, whose side head into the weekend sitting seventh in the table, one point outside the play-off positions. “Abdoullah did a great job at the weekend.

“Romaine comes into that as well, so with Jack (Clarke), I think we’ve got four really good players in the wide areas who can really contribute. They’ll need to, and then if they’re not dribbling their way in, it’s important that we hit crosses from our full-backs too.”

With Pritchard having left to join Birmingham, Roberts finds himself as one of the few remaining senior figures within the squad. His month-long absence robbed Sunderland of an important leadership figure as well as disrupting the balance of the team Beale inherited from Tony Mowbray in December.

“Paddy’s got a lot of experience,” said the Black Cats boss. “He’s won leagues and played in big games in Europe and things like that. As a young player, a lot was thrust on Paddy.

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“He’s been a loss because I think we lost our balance. When I first came in, to lose Niall (Huggins) in the first game and then to lose Paddy in the second, I don’t think people realise how big an impact that had on us.

“If you think of our flying full-backs and our wide players that come in, we’re a team that if we didn’t get you on the left, we’d try to get you on the right and that would open up space in the middle. All of a sudden, we’ve lost a lot of balance in our team. We were disorientated a bit, at the same time as changing the coach.”

Beale has also had to wrestle with the make-up of his central-midfield unit, and having failed to bring in a natural holding midfielder during last month’s transfer window, the head coach expects Dan Neil and Pierre Ekwah to have to continue sharing defensive-midfield responsibilities for the remainder of the campaign.

“Last week, I thought Dan did a really good job there,” said Beale. “Elliot Embleton has been back in training this week – he’s been out a long time – and he’s another one that goes into that mix. I want them to be hybrid midfielders.

“I see all three of them more as number eights, so they have to share the workload. Within games, possibly between Dan and Pierre, they’re going to have to share the load and rotate naturally.

“I thought Dan did a great job for us last week because he was almost the spare player as a number six and he did well with that. There’ll be different games where we tweak things, and there’s Adil Aouchiche as well, whose natural position would be to play in that eight or ten role. It’s also Abdoullah Ba’s preferred position to play as an eight, and Callum Styles certainly gives us another option too. We’re not as light in there as some people think.”

Sunderland (probable, 4-1-4-1): Patterson; Hume, O’Nien, Ballard, Hjelde; Neil; Ba, Ekwah, Bellingham, Clarke; Burstow.