Ellis Simms Sunderland return ‘unlikely’ but Tony Mowbray expecting two new striker signings

It sounds like Sunderland have accepted Ellis Simms won't be coming back.

Tony Mowbray admits Ellis Simms returning to Sunderland is now ‘pretty unlikely’ although he still expects two new strikers to arrive this month.

Ross Stewart is the only senior striker at Sunderland after Everton recalled Simms early from his loan deal last month.

Sunderland had been hoping that Simms could be allowed to return once Everton secured their own striker targets, but they have now descended into full-blown crisis mode and sacked manager Frank Lampard.

That leaves an Ellis Simms return looking almost impossible, but Mowbray says Sunderland remain on track to get some help for Stewart.

"I'm still hopeful, some of these deals are not easy to do as I've said before in this window," Mowbray said.

"Some are coming close and some of them are drifting away, but I'm still very hopeful that we will add at least one striking option before the end of the window and hopefully it will be a very good one.

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"It would be dangerous to potentially go into 18 league games with one out-and-out striker, and it would be nice to take some of the burden off Ross where he has to play 90 minutes of every single game. We will hopefully get one or potentially two in to do that.

"With what's going on at Everton, it looks pretty unlikely that Ellis will be coming back - they haven't got a manager and if I was going in there, I'd want to see all the players on the grass and see if they might be able to help. That looks like a really tight thing to rely on, because he might well not come back.

"So our job is to cover all our bases so that we have at least one, if not two, additional strikers in the building."

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