Carlos Baleba and Yankuba Minteh are both available for Brighton and Hove Albion’s Premier League clash with Bournemouth on Monday evening (19 January).
Midfielder Baleba is back with the Seagulls after Cameroon lost their quarter-final in the Africa Cup of Nations to hosts Morocco while winger Minteh has missed three games through injury.
Albion boss Fabian Hürzeler is also hopeful some unnamed members of his squad will overcome illness in time to face the Cherries at the Amex Stadium.
Hürzeler said: “He (Baleba) is back and in a good shape, in a good mood, so he’s ready to play.
“Minteh will be back, will be an option. We had some players who were sick during this week but we still have two, three more days to recover and they will be an option for the game.”
Meanwhile, Hürzeler expects on-loan striker Evan Ferguson, 21, to remain with Roma for the remainder of the season.
The Republic of Ireland international has scored five goals in 21 appearances for the Serie A side.
When asked if Ferguson, who has been linked with a potential temporary switch elsewhere, would stay in the Italian capital, Hürzeler said: “The window is open so everything can happen but at the moment that’s the case, yes.
“We all agree that he has the potential to help us as a club but now it’s about him.
“He has to make sure that when he comes back he is ready to immediately have an impact on us.”
Meanwhile, Bournemouth boss Andoni Iraola admitted that his side’s leaky defence away from home was giving him a headache.
Bournemouth are due at the Amex on Monday, having conceded 29 goals in 10 matches on their travels this season – the worst record in the Premier League.
In their past three top-flight matches away from the Vitality Stadium, the Cherries have drawn 4-4 at Manchester United and 2-2 at Chelsea either side of being thrashed 4-1 at Brentford.
Iraola told a press conference: “It definitely concerns me. We are a team that scores a lot of goals and concedes a lot of goals.
“If you want to be a very good team you cannot concede the number of goals we are conceding.
“This is the main reason we have not been able to get the results we want lately because we have been scoring a lot of goals and not getting the results.
“It’s very difficult to do the things we do – to go to Chelsea and score two goals or Old Trafford and score four goals and not win.
“If you score two, three or four goals away, you should get more wins and we are not getting them because we are conceding goals. If we don’t improve this, it’s going to be difficult to get more wins.”







