Marc McNulty will miss Sunderland's trip to Rochdale tomorrow - but his hamstring injury is unlikely to sideline him for long.
The Scotland international striker limped out of the Black Cats' weekend win over Portsmouth at the Stadium of Light early in the second half and in his post-match Press conference Ross was hopeful that the injury would turn out to be only a minor problem.
And while tomorrow's visit to Spotland will come too soon for the on-loan Reading man, Ross left open the possibility that McNulty could be back in training later this week ahead of Saturday's home game against AFC Wimbledon.
Ross said: "He will miss tomorrow but initially we thought you might miss another couple of weeks but then sometimes with these minor muscle injuries the prognosis changes quite quickly and the news is a bit more positive today, but we need to see how he will react over the course of the rest of the week.
"Taking him off so quickly after he had the injury will have helped a little bit but we wouldn't want to be without him for long, but then we have a lot of games in a short period of time so the quicker we can get him back the better because he has made a really positive impact in terms of his performance level, and he's also help the players around him as well given the manner with which he has played.
"With the [Rochdale] game is coming so quickly he will miss tomorrow and then will see how he is later in the week."
Duncan Watmore could also resume training later in the week after recovering from the thigh strain that has kept him out since the opening day of the campaign.
But Ethan Robson is still a couple of weeks away from returning from the thigh injury that has seen him miss the start of the season.
"Duncan was on the grass today doing a little bit of running so hopefully towards the end of the week he might start training properly," said Ross.
"Ethan has still not been on the grass so I would imagine he still a couple of weeks away."
