INJURED duo David Brooks and Adam Smith are both on course to return to training in the coming weeks.

Brooks has not played since suffering ankle ligament damage during a pre-season friendly at Brentford in July, while Smith has missed the past three fixtures since limping off with a hamstring problem at Leicester.

Both are again set to miss out when West Ham United visit Vitality Stadium tomorrow afternoon (3pm), but boss Eddie Howe confirmed the key pair are not far from a return.

He told the Daily Echo: "Adam is a difficult one because we don't think the hamstring injury was too serious, but I think it was in a difficult position.

"We hope to get him back very soon. It may well be towards the return of the international break coming up.

"But with these injuries, we have to be very careful. We obviously don't want him to have a setback."

Discussing Brooks, Howe added: "Similar to Adam really. I think he might be a little bit behind Adam in terms of his return to play, but he's getting there.

"We haven't seen him on the grass yet, but I don't think he's too far away from building up to that point.

"He's spending a lot of time in the gym on certain different machines that we have and he's building his strength. He'll be very keen to get out on the grass.

"David is very much a lover of football, not so much the gym side of it and he'll be very keen to get back on the pitches I'm sure."

Simon Francis, Lloyd Kelly and Arnaut Danjuma all made their returns from injury during Wednesday night's Carabao Cup loss at Burton Albion.

And Howe confirmed the trio came through unscathed, with Francis substituted as a precaution after feeling a tight hamstring during the fractured second half where the floodlights failed three times.

"Hopefully we took the right steps with Simon to protect him," said Howe.

"Lloyd was fine. I think he fatigued a bit at the end of the game, but that was natural given the time that he's been out. No ill effects."

Asked if Danjuma could be ready to start this weekend having played for around half an hour at Pirelli Stadium, Howe added: "No, we're building him up.

"Half an hour was the marker that we put on him for that game. It's not suddenly going to go from 30 to 90. We're going to have to build up to that point. We don't want to risk a recurrence of his injury."