Maguire on track for early return - Ross

JACK Ross is hopeful Chris Maguire will recover from a broken leg ahead of schedule.

The Scottish forward suffered a fracture in the 4-2 victory over Gillingham on February 19, although he did try to play on.

The initial diagnosis was that he would be out for six to eight weeks. Right from the start Maguire was talking about being back sooner and, although he will be struggling to meet his own ambitious timetable, he looks on course to return early.

“Chris is only three weeks into what was estimated as a six to eight-week period,” manager Ross revealed.

“I think he believes he will be sooner than that.

“He’s running already on the treadmill at 50 per cent, which is pretty quick in terms of where he was at, but we’ve still got to manage him properly through it. Of course, you add in the matchfitness side as well.

“I do believe he will be back quicker than we said originally because I think he’ll push himself. Certainly we hope he’ll be back for the last part of the league games.”

Sunderland will need as much squad depth as possible during April, when they have eight League One matches.

One player notable by his absence recently has been Bryan Oviedo.

The Costa Rican left-back has not even been on the bench since his proposed move to West Brom collapsed on deadline day. Since then he has suffered three different minor injuries.

Oviedo’s only appearances in 2019 came at home to Luton Town in January, and in the Football League Trophy quarter-final against Manchester City.

On Tuesday, 22-year-old Denver Hume was preferred on the bench despite not having played firstteam football since September because of injury.

“He’s been back training for the last couple of days, but over the last two or three months he’s not trained that regularly, which is not ideal,” Ross said of Oviedo.

“I’ve got a squad of players who, by and large, are training every single day.

“Time passes. If it had been for a long-term injury people would have looked at it in a different way than had it been niggles, but the reality is it’s impacted upon his ability to train and be available for games. We’ll just have to assess that on an ongoing basis.

“I put a lot of stock on what happens in training and sometimes there are players who don’t always get the reward.”