Sunderland team news: This is when Bailey Wright and Jewison Bennette will return

Both players returned to Wearside from their respective World Cup campaigns last week but Tony Mowbray felt that the visit of West Brom to the Stadium of Light on Monday came just too soon.

Another week on the training ground has improved the prospects of both featuring on Saturday, though in both cases there is significant competition for places as Mowbray's injury list begins to clear.

"They were both in good shape and in their own minds they were probably fine but we get the training data from their respective federations and their loads were down considerably from what we would be doing here," Mowbray said.

"You've got to remember that in a tournament scenario they're invariably either recovering from or preparing for a game. A lot of that can be preparing the starting XI for the game and so it's not the same physicality of what we would be doing four days out from a game, for example.

"So the call was that they probably weren't at full speed, so let's get them training for a while and their numbers up. It's just been about integrating them back in really."

Mowbray remains hopeful that Ross Stewart will make his return to the match day squad on Saturday but it is otherwise likely to be a similar squad that he names, with Edouard Michut and Daniel Ballard both close to a return but perhaps more likely to feature over the festive week of fixtures.