Agbonlahor in fitness race

Striker set for Villa return

By Chris Burton   Last updated: 21st February 2008   Subscribe to RSS Feed

Agbonlahor in fitness race

Agbonlahor: In contention

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Gabriel Agbonlahor could return from injury in time to line up for Aston Villa against Reading on Sunday.

The striker suffered a hamstring injury during Villa's game with Fulham on 3rd February and was denied the opportunity to earn his first full England cap after being forced to pull out Fabio Capello's squad to face Switzerland.

He also missed the impressive 4-1 victory over Newcastle a fortnight ago, but is now back in full training and pushing hard to be fit for this weekend's trip to the Madejski Stadium.

Martin O'Neill confirmed that Agbonlahor is back in his plans and that he is hoping an improvement in the weather will allow his young star to get a couple more training sessions under his belt before being thrown back into the side.

Precautions

"Gabby is fine," he said.

"He has done a little bit of training. The pitches were too frosty on Tuesday but he did some training indoors. That was the first day he has joined in with us.

"Hopefully he will now get in a full spell of training and then we will see how he is. He is been raring to go now and has been for some days.

"We didn't let him join in any of the training sessions during our short break in Malaga but that was purely precautionary."

Improved

O'Neill also confirmed that Martin Laursen has shaken off a heel injury and will be available for the Premier League clash with the Royals.

"Martin is okay," he said.

"His heel has improved. He just needed to take a bit of time out which he has done."