Swansea City take on Sunderland at the Swansea.Com Stadium on Saturday afternoon with both teams having big question marks over their selection of a first team squad. The Black Cats set off yesterday day afternoon for the long trip south with some fresh injury news.

Let’s start with the Swans, Ben Cabango made a return coming on as a very late substitute against Blackburn Rovers last Friday and he has trained this week. However, he is still feeling his injury to an extent so the first big question is ‘Will head coach Michael Duff risk him starting in this game ?’ The defence has performed impeccably over the last few weeks, and it would be poor to change that just to shoehorn Cabango back in to the squad. Harrison Ashby has signalled his intent to continue his reintroduction in to the Swans first eleven, but there is another headache for Duff. Josh Key has received treatment all week for his injury from three weeks ago which has seen him miss games. Again he is still feeling the injury but to a far lesser extent. We will find out more later today.

Ashby will be extremely disappointed to miss out on a start in this game, so we feel he will start. Ashby wants to push on of course. “I felt like it went pretty well at Blackburn and we will see what happens, although I should have scored with the chance I had late on so hopefully I’ll do better next time I am in that position. But I can feel the chemistry growing with the lads, the understanding is coming in terms of how the lads play and how I play alongside them. The gaffer is working with me on the things he wants me to do and improve on”

During a week where we have again seen bigger off the field salaries introduced at Swansea City it will be nice to get back to what is happening on the pitch. That is rather than wondering why successful American businessmen want to live and work in Swansea.

Adil Aouchiche for Sunderland is a big doubt, his groin injury has kept him out of team selection for two games now. He has travelled to Swansea as well as Eliezer Mayenda who is also a doubt after his hamstring injury. Aji Alese Is a long term loss for the Black Cats and Chris Rigg has been selected for the Engkand U17 side to play in the World Cup in Indonesia. He can’t be in two places at once so he is unavailable for Saturday. Like he Swans, Sunderland have numerous long term injuries which wouldn’t have affected this weeks team selections for this fixture. On his ever increasing injury list Mowbray said before setting off for Swansea. “I think the injury list for the last however many months now has been pretty solid on my board, around six first-team players unavailable with long-term injuries We have added Eliezer Mayenda to the group but he has only played one 90 minutes game against Hibs in a bounce match on the training ground. A few lads have travelled to Southampton for an under-21s game but we left Mayenda because of the hamstring issue and sitting on a coach for five, six, seven hours wasn’t going to be good. He’s going to come with us to try and integrate him with the group.”

On Chris Rigg, Sunderland manager Tony Mowbray commented yesterday. “I’m delighted for him, disappointed that he’s going to miss four games for the team of course. Delighted for Chris, it’s a fantastic achievement for him to potentially captain that team as well. We had a long chat with him, delighted for him, it’s a fantastic experience and this club would never deny a young guy playing for his country at a World Cup. He has to understand when he comes back, hopefully the results have been really positive and he finds it difficult to get back in the group”

That’s two sides with injuries a plenty but coming off the back of good results last weekend. More on the game later today from Michael Duff.

Artwork by Swansea Independent

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