The midfielder withdrew from Stuart Pearce’s squad with a chest infection, but City manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, having had a cold himself this week, has confirmed that the 20-year-old is fit for the game at St Andrews.
“Michael Johnson will train with us,” says Sven. “After a game he always has a couple of days’ recovery due to the injury that he had earlier this season, and then he picked up a chest infection. I don’t know if he picked it up from me, but he will train today.
“Michael Ball will not be ready for this weekend,” he continues, “but hopefully he will start training again on Monday. Bojinov should start training with us then as well. Micah is still two to three weeks away, but of course we have not seen everyone who was away with their countries yet.
“It’s a good problem to have, having so many players with their countries means you have a good squad, so it’s better to have it than not.”
As he faced the media on Thursday lunchtime, Sven was still waiting for players to return from international duty with the two racking up the most air miles, Felipe Caicedo and Jihai Sun, not expected to link up with the squad until Friday.
“We’re not ruling out Caicedo or Jihai, they will come straight to the hotel in Birmingham and join us for training there tomorrow,” Sven explained. “I have not spoken to them yet, but they will both have had long trips back so we will have to judge how they are on Friday.”
