Salis Abdul Samed update after Sunderland beat Cardiff City

Phil Smith explains why Salis Abdul Samed missed Sunderland's win over Cardiff City in his regular #onthewhistle Q&A

Transcript

00:00from Darren over who left this comment underneath our on our instant reaction video. Darren says,

00:06was Samad injured or have we just seen the end of him? Do you think? Yeah, so I asked

00:10Salees Abdul, Samad was obviously a surprise absentee from the squad and I asked for the

00:17briefs about this in his press conference afterwards and he said that Samad has picked

00:20up a calf injury. It's not a season ending one. I think by the sounds of it, it'll be about three

00:25or four weeks. So some are hopeful that he might be able to come back after the national break.

00:30Which is obviously the same kind of timescale as Enzo Le Fay at the moment. So it's not a major

00:35injury, but I think the problem is obviously the challenge for Samad is that, you know,

00:39if he comes back after the national break, he then again has to try and rebuild his sharpness.

00:43He then has to again rebuild his match minutes and with the way the players and the team

00:47performing at the moment, that's obviously going to be quite difficult for him. So,

00:50although it's not the biggest injury in the world, it is obviously a fairly significant setback

00:54because time for him to sort of build his match fitness is really, really running out.

00:58So that is a real disappointment because I think ideally, I think at some point,

01:02Labreece, if possible, would probably like to give Daniel or Job a breather ahead of a potential

01:06playoff campaign just because of the sheer number of minutes they're playing. Hopefully,

01:10he will be able to do that towards the back end of the season if Samad does get back after the

01:13international break and gets to build some sharpness. But yeah, at the moment, it's another

01:17kind of frustration really in what has been a really frustrating season. So that was what was

01:21going on with Samad.