Interim Sunderland boss confirms two surprise injury boosts and explains striker selection latest

Mike Dodds has said that Timothée Pembélé and Jay Matete have both taken a major step in their injury comebacks this week.

Sunderland's head coach confirmed that both have been in full training this week, and could therefore be in contention for selection when the Black Cats travel to Bristol City next weekend. That could offer a major boost to Sunderland's new head coach, with neither having featured this season. Dodds also confirmed that Nazariy Rusyn is eligible for selection after missing the last two fixtures with a minor groin problem.

"It'll be a similar squad [tomorrow]," Dodds said.

Timmy is back training this week, so he's trained fully. Jay Matete has trained fully as well, which is two massive positives for us. "This game is obviously going to come a bit too soon for them but we're hoping that maybe by the back end of next week, they might be involved. They're two very positive additions for us. Aji and Dennis aren't quite back in the group yet.

"Nazariy is back in with the group."

Dodds has a big decision to make as to who leads the line for Sunderland against West Brom on Saturday lunchtime, and said he had been working closely with the striking group over the course of the week.

"As I've said earlier, when you actually look at it, the difficulty is that for all I appreciate that the number that matters is goals scored, but we are creating a huge amount of chances," Dodds said.

"Possession that ends in chances, we're in top six for all of those types of things when you look at the stats. So you have to have a balance if you look at changing things. We don't want to put any additional pressure on them, but we know there's additional work that we have to do with them. So we have to get the balance between the two and it's just been about tweaking one or two things in training, and some of those players have done some additional training which hopefully will have helped them improve their confidence."