Speaking in his pre-Sheffield United press conference, the manager said: "Strange enough at this late stage of the season we seem to be recovering a lot of players.
"At the moment those injured and unavailable are Mamadou Sakho, Connor Wickham and Nathan Ferguson, who has made big progress in actual fact and will be training with the team at the beginning of next week.
"Even he at the end of the season has managed to get fit, which is very positive – but particularly for him because it’s been such a miserable 18 months for the young lad.
"Both James Tomkins and Nathaniel Clyne played Under-23s last Monday after a shortish period training with us. They’re fit enough to take part. They played in the U23 game for 60 minutes and were back into training with us this week.
"Ferguson actually joined the initial stages of the training session but was taken out again to really complete his full rehabilitation programme and get cleared by the sport science department and be 100%.
"[Tomkins] was a major concern for us, because muscle injuries, even severe muscle injuries and cruciate ligament injuries, one’s experienced those. But you don’t experience – it’s the first time in my career where I had a player suffer a major eye injury.
"It’s delightful to see him recover and be able to play and luckily able to compete for a place in the last two weeks of the season."
Then expanding on the importance of having a large, fit squad with a congested fixture schedule on the horizon, Hodgson said: "[Having such a strong squad is] very important and in particular with so many games being played in a short space of time.
"This is the start of a two-week spell where we play five matches – we need everyone available and it gives me the opportunity to give players a rest and avoid the situation we had at end of Project Restart [where we were unable to] fulfil fixtures with the players we had."
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