Mat Sadler issues Jack Earing update ahead of season opener

Earing has missed the past three friendlies due to a hamstring injury after starring against Alvechurch and Villa respectively earlier in pre-season.

The 25-year-old returned from a serious knee injury last December and scored three goals in 17 league matches before a hamstring injury kept him out of the final eight games.

Sadler has revealed that the injury doesn’t appear to be serious and expects him to be in contention for Walsall’s league opener against Morecambe at Bescot on Saturday.

“Hopefully he should train by the end of next week so he’ll be in contention for next Saturday,” he confirmed.

“He just felt his hamstring which doesn’t look like it was a bad one so he should be back into the training group hopefully by next week.”

Elsewhere, Brandon Comley (leg), Donervon Daniels (knee) and Danny Johnson (neural infection) remain on the sidelines.

Sadler confirmed that Daniels will undergo surgery on the knee injury, he suffered when he away in the summer, next week before a further six-week spell out of action.

Comley is two weeks into a “six to seven” week absence, while there is still no clear time frame on Danny Johnson, who has missed the whole of pre-season with a viral infection.

He added: “Donervon will have surgery next week. Once he has his surgery, it will be six weeks from there.

“Brandon is just over two weeks into a six to seven week stint so we’ve got another block without him.

“By the time the first game starts maybe it’ll be three weeks from then.

“Danny will hopefully be able to start doing some form of exercise soon. The timeline from that is still a little bit sketchy. He was here today (at Solihull on Saturday) and has been about and around it which is good news.”