No new injury concerns and a return to fitness for Rocco Vata means Tom Cleverley has more options for tomorrow night’s game with Leeds at Vicarage Road (7.45pm).
The Irish Under-21 international, who has been in a rich run of form, has missed the last two games: initially with a knock picked up in training and then on Saturday a virus ruled him out.
“Good news on Rocco, as it looks like he’s got over the virus and he should be an addition to the squad,” said Cleverley.
“We have had a little bit of sickness in the squad, affecting Angelo Ogbonna and Yasser Larouci.
“Both look like they could still be available and apart from that everyone is ok.”
Both Moussa Sissoko and Mamadou Doumbia suffered cramp late in the game at Sunderland and had to come off.
“When you see the running data from Saturday it was physically one of our best performances,” the head coach pointed out.
“You can forgive players when you see someone like James Abankwah making recovery runs and I see Mamadou pressing in the way he did, then I can forgive a bit of cramp.”
Leeds, on the other hand, rested almost their entire team on Saturday and, while they went out of the FA Cup at Millwall, they have a group of players that largely won’t be asked to play twice in four days.
“I’m wanting us to ride a bit of a wave of the performance from Saturday,” Cleverley said.
“I said to you earlier in the season when there was an instance where we were the ones with fresher legs, it doesn’t always work that way.
“The shoe’s on the other foot this time and we have to have the mindset that it doesn’t work that way.
“Sometimes rhythm in football can be really powerful, and although we haven’t got a rhythm of results I feel we are getting consistency and rhythm of performance that will eventually bring us results.
“So I’m not reading too much into Leeds resting so many players.”
While the benefit of a rest is open to interpretation, the league table isn’t – tomorrow night’s visitors are top.
“The best teams usually bring out strong performances from us, we rise to that challenge,” the head coach remarked.
“We’ve played two really good games of football against Leeds since I’ve been in charge and I expect another one.
“They are the most in control team in the division, no doubt about that.
“They try suffocating you of possession and with the ball they have a lot of control and quality.
“To lose what he did in the summer and maintain this level is a really impressive job from Daniel Farke.”
