Sunderland boss Jack Ross has commented on Bryan Oviedo’s situation.
Sunderland boss Jack Ross has told The Northern Echo that he had planned for Bryan Oviedo to be gone by now – but he’s injured and hasn’t trained anyway.
Sunderland were busy on deadline day as they brought in playmaker Lewis Morgan as well as strikers Kazaiah Sterling and Will Grigg to boost the promotion-chasing squad.
The Black Cats were also expecting some departures, with left back Oviedo widely expected to move on before the January transfer window.
Manager Ross recently told The Chronicle that Oviedo was set to join West Bromwich Albion, but the deal fell through at the last minute.
That means that Oviedo must now at least see out the season with Sunderland, though he hasn’t featured since his deadline day exit collapsed.
Oviedo, 28, still has a year of his Sunderland contract will to go, and Ross has been discussing his situation after he missed out against Accrington Stanley on Friday.
Ross has revealed that the Costa Rican international is injured right now, hence his absence, and admitted that he was planning for life without Oviedo on deadline day, but there is still an important role for him at the Stadium of Light.
“He’s been injured. He only trained on the day of the (Accrington) game,” said Ross. “He’s been injured with his calf, and he hadn’t trained, or at least he’d trained very little, between deadline day and now. He’s been there for me all season. Obviously, it wasn’t an ideal situation for him, the way it panned out and from a planning perspective, we were probably planning that our squad was going to be one less.”
“But nothing has changed in terms of how I view him and how important he could be for us. At the moment, we can only select ten outfield players to start and 16 outfield players in total, and we’ve got a healthier squad that we’ve had all season. That coincided with the new players coming in, so it means at the present time, there’s going to be four or five players every week that aren’t involved,” he added.
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