Ross eager to have McGeady’s ‘quality’ on the pitch

Jack Ross admits that he is tempted to throw Aiden McGeady straight into the matchday 18 tomorrow.

McGeady played no part in pre-season due to a calf injury but he joined in with the squad during training this week.

“I always look at each player individually, because they react in different ways. Aiden, now he’s back and fit, he’s better in with us as a group than doing conditioning work,” Ross said.

“Normally if you look at the time he’d been out, he’d have continued to do work on his own and be fed into us. With Aiden, it’s better just to get back in, he’ll get more from it.

“So then it’s the same question [with first team return], do we just throw him back in?

“We have to weigh that up, whether it be from the bench or starting or whatever that may be. We’ll continue to assess that. We film training and we’ll take a look and take a decision from there. “Saturday is quick but if you asked Aiden, he’s just the type of player who loves playing,” he added. “You see how he plays, the ball is the most important thing to him.

“We did some things in training that I’m going to watch back this afternoon and there’ll be a balanced decision from there. His quality means that it is tempting.”

Ross has had one or two fresh injury concerns with Dylan McGeouch, Denver Hume and Jack Baldwin all picking up knocks in training. All three trained yesterday, however, and so should be fit for tomorrow.

The Black Cats boss will make a late decision on Bryan Oviedo, who only returned from international late on Wednesday night. The leftback had travelled from Seoul, where his side lost 2-0 to South Korea.