Fabio Borini could feature when Sunderland face Swansea City at the Liberty Stadium on Saturday (KO 3pm).
The Italy international hasn’t featured since August’s trip to Southampton during which he suffered a groin injury, but after resuming training he’s on the cusp of a competitive return.
Seb Larsson and Jan Kirchhoff are also pushing to feature in South Wales, with David Moyes praising the duo who came off the bench during last weekend’s win over Leicester City.
“Kirchhoff and Larsson had to come on last week and they played very well in the second half, and Fabio Borini is also just about ready to be involved after a full week in training.
“He’s close so at least we have some of the long-term players back who we had problems with at the start of the season.”
He continued: “It was really bad news for us but terrible news for the boy [Duncan Watmore] because he’d been doing really well for us.
“He’s done his cruciate and he’s got a couple of little cartilage tears there as well which will need to be fixed, so as soon as the swelling is down on his knee we’ll get him operated on and hopefully he’ll be fine.
“We wanted to start getting some of the younger players into the team – Paddy, Duncan and Lynden have all be playing – so to lose the three of them to pretty similar injuries is really bad, but they are young and they will come back.”