SUNDERLAND MANAGER MARTIN O’NEILL says Nicklas Bendtner could be fit for the FA Cup quarter-final tie at Everton on Saturday.

The striker, on loan from Arsenal, was stretchered off during the 1-0 win against Liverpool last weekend shortly after scoring the decisive goal following a clash with defender Martin Skrtel.

But the early indications of the knee injury are not as bad as first feared and O’Neill has revealed the player himself opted to start training again.

“The news on Nicklas is encouraging,” O’Neill said. ”We had originally been expecting to wait 48 hours for swelling to go down around the knee before we could consider a scan.

“But the knee itself got much better in the 24 hours immediately afterwards, which looked good and it meant he felt quietly confident about doing a little bit of training yesterday. The very fact that he felt confident enough to want to try it out is obviously a good sign, but we just have to wait and see how it develops over the week and see whether there’s any reaction.”

Sunderland have been resurgent since O’Neill’s appointment and, despite suffering a 4-0 reverse at West Brom, they hit back with a 1-1 draw at North East rivals Newcastle and followed that up with a 1-0 home win over Liverpool. However, the manager is expecting a tight game on Saturday and believes his side have the quality in attacking through Bendtner and Fraizer Campbell to nick a goal at any given moment.

“You can never pre-judge a game, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the cup game against Everton is a tight affair and that being the case, you need players who can nick you a goal and players who can stop them going in at the other end.

“We had that at the weekend in what was a very tight game against Liverpool, but we were defensively very solid and we had players like Fraizer Campbell and Nicklas who always had the ability to be dangerous in attack.”

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