Sunderland injury and transfer update - #onthewhistle - video Dailymotion

Sunderland Echo

Phil Smith discusses the main headlines as Sunderland returned to action at South Shields

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00:00wasn't involved yesterday he was the only sort of new injury and we knew of course that rigged

00:05had been ruled out of the european championships the under-19s european championships an ankle

00:10problem thankfully the news is really positive to be honest rig was there yesterday he is fully

00:15recovered it's just that he wasn't able to start training at the same time as his teammates because

00:19of that ankle problem so someone just decided that saturday was a little bit early for him but

00:24he's expected to join full training next week in portugal so i imagine we should see him getting a

00:29little bit of game time obviously on that trip in the games next weekend so yeah pretty good news

00:34all in all um yeah nothing to worry about there and rig will be joining the action and pretty shortly

00:40the one thing that you would have to say kind of moving forward is that obviously we've got the

00:44news on friday that luke 09 dennis serkin adria lisa and leo hielder have all been ruled out of the first

00:49three games of the premier league season and you could see yesterday that defense is definitely an

00:54area where some of them are stretched at the moment they have some talented young players they have

00:58players who can fill in those positions but there's clearly a an issue with depth given all of

01:03those injuries ray nildo will of course come into the picture but i think it's pretty clear

01:06and that that's a big focus for son and now i think we'd all agree it's been a really strong

01:10start to the transfer window but there's definitely some work to do in getting those defensive

01:14options uh strengthened i asked sabrice about that game and he gave me a one-word response

01:19yes as in we do need to sign some defenders and a short and obvious answer was his kind of message

01:25um so that was definitely something that really came through yesterday and i think we know that

01:29sondland are clearly looking at strengthening their goalkeeping ranks as well but i think defenders

01:34that's going to be a big focus in terms of what's coming forward some definitely need at least one

01:38centre-half without luke 09 news so i think that's definitely something to watch moving forward

01:42um labris kind of set out the template for how things are going to move forward so

01:47he told the players who were involved obviously in the south shields game that's obviously his

01:53main group that he's working with at the moment he's basically told them that the first two weeks

01:58of pre-season um is about looking at them giving them an opportunity a chance to build their fitness

02:03i don't think any significant decisions are going to be made on players futures who are in that group

02:07at the moment until after the portugal trip that's a pretty clear message so there's obviously a lot

02:11of players in that category of we're trying to work out whether they're going to be part of this

02:15squad they may be weighing up other options um you know a classic example that would be nec

02:20to triantus who hibbs are really keen to bring back he does have interest from other clubs as well

02:23but he's quite keen to see if he's got a role to play at sondland labris is assessing his progress

02:28obviously he's been away on loan for a year there's a lot of players in that category and labris's

02:32message has been very much let's have the first two weeks of pre-season let's train let's have some

02:37game time and then he's going to make decisions um on whether those players are likely to be

02:42involved at the premier league squad or not after that first two week period so probably after the

02:45trip to portugal and he made really clear that he'd make early decisions we've seen so far already

02:50that someone's been really decisive in terms of their incomings and it's clearly going to be the

02:54same in terms of their outgoings as well so there'll be a lot of players in that category um

02:59triantus is an obvious one even players like i mentioned abdulahi uh now huggins jensen seal where

03:04um you know someone will be making decisions fairly early in terms of whether they think they've got a

03:09realistic chance of getting in the current squad for the premier league next season or whether it's about

03:14them going out and finding some game time now within that it might be that some players impressing

03:18someone opt to keep them around for a little longer and then make a decision i think abdulahi is an

03:22obvious one where someone don't know a huge amount about them in their own sort of environment because

03:27obviously he's been absent from training for so long so yeah it's going to be really interesting

03:32to see how that develops um and yeah so keep an eye out

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Sunderland injury and transfer update - #onthewhistle

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