“He’s available – he has trained now,” Hodgson confirmed. “Obviously, we have to be careful and the sports science people are urging caution, so we’ll see.
“He himself feels he’s fine, so I don’t have any concerns myself, but we will have to keep an eye on it because it is quite a long time since he played his last game.”
The overall health of the squad has improved significantly since the unfortunate run of injuries over the festive period.
“The injury situation, funnily enough, is pretty good,” Hodgson said. “It is in stark contrast to how it was a few weeks ago.
“The only players we can’t call upon are the two who had operations, which are Cheick Doucouré and Rob Holding.
“Joel Ward is [also] still not back to full fitness, but he is actually quite close now so it won’t be long before we get him back as well.
“It is pretty good at this stage of the season to only have those three players missing.”
Hodgson confirmed the club were looking to bring in some new faces during the January window, but that focus was more on keeping the current squad fit and ready for Premier League action.
"Getting players back from injury now is going to make a vast difference to the team we put on the field and even to the way we can play," he explained. "I'm not prepared to say that the next part of the season hinges necessarily on transfers and players coming into the club.
"It's going to hinge more on how well the group of players we've got, and we believe in, can play, and they have shown over quite a long period of time that they are more than capable of holding their own in the division.
"But of course as a manager there are always little gaps in your thinking, when you're putting your team and squad together, when you think it would be nice if you had another player in this position to compete and maybe help us move forward."