Alex Pritchard is an injury doubt ahead of Sunderland's Carabao Cup tie at QPR.
The midfielder suffered a neck injury in Sunderland's 4-0 win at Crewe last week, but was passed fit to start against Charlton at the weekend and played for 70 minutes in the 1-0 defeat at the Stadium of Light.
But Lee Johnson says the summer addition is rated only '50-50' ahead of tomorrow night's trip to Loftus Road.
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Johnson said: "The 50-50 shout is Alex Pritchard.
"His neck still hasn't quite recovered, so he might be available again but he did well to start on Saturday because he played through the pain barrier."
Johnson is expected to make changes for the last 16 cup tie, and he has more room to manoeuvre now that Lynden Gooch and Corry Evans have recovered from injuries.
But Elliot Embleton is still unavailable as he serves the final match of his three-game suspension following his red card at Gillingham, while long-term absentee Arbenit Xhemajli is not yet ready to step up to first-team action despite having had a couple of outings for the U23s.
“It is a relatively clean bill of health, but obviously Elliot is suspended, Jordan [Willis] remains out and Arbenit [Xhemajli] is continuing his recovery," said Johnson.
"They [the players returning] have another three or four days under their belts and there was a few more minutes for some of them on Saturday.
"Six or seven of them have taken two steps back in their fitness levels - not as in lungs, but match fitness - and that's where we can use the amount of games as a positive, especially in the Carabao Cup where you have the opportunity to have up to nine subs and use five of them.
"That could play a big part in the rounds moving forward and as the lowest ranked team in the competition, that may make it a little more difficult for us, but at the same time we think we have good changes that we can make as well."
