Sunderland sporting director Kristjaan Speakman has sparked hope that Everton loanee Nathan Broadhead might play for the League One club again this season.
The forward was in strong form during his time with the Black Cats, scoring eight goals across all competitions before picking up an injury in last month's League Cup defeat to Arsenal.
Having found the back of the net earlier in the match the Blues man was forced off in the first half with a hamstring problem, with initial fears suggesting he could miss the rest of the campaign.
However, there has now been a much more promising update for the forward.
Sunderland's sporting director has given an update suggesting that the 23-year-old could potentially be back in action much more soon.
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He said [via ChronicleLive ]: "There aren't many Nathan Broadheads around out there and everybody who has seen Nathan play will have seen him perform to a really high level.
"There aren't many of those types of players and we were delighted to get him.
"It's really disappointing for him and for the club that he has got injured when he was on a run of scoring six goals in six games, but there is nothing to suggest that he can't come back from that injury within the normal time period - I think he has still got nine or ten weeks left.
"He would then come in at the back end of the season and we don't know how many games we'll have in that period because of course there could be further postponements.
"So he would almost be like a new signing with six, eight, ten games to go.
"We're really open-minded about that.
"We don't want to be a football club that is taking young players like Nathan on loan and then at the first sign of a problem, ejecting them out.
"We see Nathan as one of the group and we want to try to ensure that we can get him back in as quick a period of time as possible.
"Our job is to try and get Nathan back as quickly as possible, because when it gets to the crunch at the end of the season he would be an excellent player to bring back into the squad."
Initial reports suggested that Broadhead would be out for at least three months, with the potential that he could miss the rest of the campaign.
