Gardner was forced to pull out of the England squad for last weekend's friendly with Denmark after suffering a recurrence of a back injury.
The former Port Vale defender admitted he did not want to risk the injury and he is confident he has fully recovered from the problem.
"I'm fine, it was more of a precaution. The physio said it was best if I didn't risk an injury although I wanted to play so much," Gardner told the club's official website.
"But when you are playing regularly you don't want an injury to knock you back. That was the case.
"I had a problem with my back straight after the Arsenal game. I trained on Tuesday but only did a light session because it was still troubling me then.
"I then got the call to go up, trained Thursday with no problems, felt good, trained Friday and then right at the end of the session my back locked up.
"To be honest, it settled down straight away and even if the game was early this week I might have been able to be involved, but the physio thought it was best not to try and play on Sunday."
