He will continue his gradual introduction to the first team with a likely place on the bench tomorrow.

Head of sports medicine and sports science Dr Peter Brukner said the club were pleased with how the player’s recuperation had gone since joining from Newcastle on transfer deadline day in January.

“It’s been a long process rehabilitating him – about eight or nine weeks – but we are happy with the result,” said the Australian.

“We’ve seen steady improvement over that time; he’s much stronger in that tendon and in general as well.

“We still need to keep working with him and we want to build his training and playing load up to the level required.

“He’ll play some more minutes against Braga and hopefully he’ll be involved more and more with each game.

“Overall, we are really happy with his progress.

“The physio and fitness guys have worked really hard with Andy and to his credit he’s not shirked the issue.

“He’s worked very hard to get himself right. It was very frustrating for him not being able to be out there with the other players.

“You’ve just signed for a new club and want to be out there but you are stuck inside in the gym.

“That was hugely frustrating for him but as soon as we got him outside he was much happier.”

Brukner was happy with Carroll’s 16-minute cameo against United, his first game since December 28.

“He came through the game well,” he added. “He has had a very long rehabilitation programme.

“We were really determined to build him up slowly and just get him a lot stronger to cope with the load.

“He spent the first couple of weeks in the gym and on the treatment table.

“Then we were able to get him outside and start him running and gradually we introduced him to ball drills.

“He had full training last week and had his 16 minutes on Sunday.

“Unless anything goes wrong between now and Thursday, we’ll expect him to play for a longer period of time.”