Sunderland injuries: Samed, Poveda, Ballard, Cirkin, Hjelde, Le Fee

REGIS Le Bris expects to have Salis Abdul Samed back in his Sunderland squad for this weekend’s visit of Swansea City, but Ian Poveda might not feature again before the end of the regular season.

Samed has missed the last five Championship games but is now back in training, and while tonight’s game at Norwich City will come too soon for the midfielder, he’s likely to return to the bench on Saturday.

But Poveda’s hugely frustrating first season on Wearside continues.

The forward hasn’t started a single league game and has featured just six times in the Championship, and he’s not expected to be in contention to return from his latest setback until early May, Le Bris confirms.

Sunderland play QPR on May 3, their final game of the regular season, before the play-offs begin the following week.

In other injury news, Leo Hjelde is ready to start tonight if he gets the nod after returning to action from the bench at West Brom at the weekend. But Le Bris will continue to closely manage Enzo Le Fee on the back of the midfielder’s injury, and Dan Ballard and Dennis Cirkin are still expected to be sidelined for another couple of weeks.

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Le Bris said yesterday: “So Leo is available now [to start], we have Enzo but just for a short part of the game for now.

“Salis [Abdul Samed] trained with us this morning so he should be available for the Swansea game. Step by step, we get two or three players back but of course we have now lost Romaine.

“If it’s possible to manage the core of the group to play one, maybe one and a half games a week this is better but of course it’s not always possible.

“With Dan and Dennis, I think they will probably need two weeks more,” Le Bris added.