LEWIS Cook has been pencilled in for minutes with the club's under-21s in the coming weeks, as he steps up his recovery from knee surgery.

Cook, who signed a new contract with Cherries this month, has not featured since rupturing his ACL during a Championship clash at Preston in March.

It is the second time in his career the England international has suffered such an injury.

But after being reintegrated back into training in recent weeks, the 24-year-old is now getting closer to a return to the pitch.

Shaun Cooper's under-21s squad are due to host Arsenal in the Premier League Cup on October 6, but boss Scott Parker was reluctant to put an exact date on his return.

"No, not really. I’d be reluctant to let that out as well," said Parker.

"I think the main focus for Lewis, it’s been a long time, it’s coming back from his second injury and the main focus for us is getting him as strong as we can.

"I think we just kind of tick off every milestone we get to. This next milestone now is him training with us fully with no modifications in his work in that sense and being around it.

"Hopefully he comes through that and then hopefully gets some games in.

"I know there’s a couple of under-21s games coming up and we’ll look to put him in that and then work out how he comes through that how far he is away from joining us.

"He’s been around us now, more in full training and hopefully we can get some minutes into him in some games coming up in the coming weeks."

Aside from Cook, the only other player currently unavailable through injury is Junior Stanislas.

"Junior is on his way back," said Parker.

"He’s been on the pitch. He’s been doing some bits on his own.

"Today was the first day he’d been back with us, albeit modified. So he’s moving in the right direction. That’s pleasing."

He added: "Will Dennis had a bit of a problem in the warm-up in the last game, trained today and seemed okay.

"Will will be available, but the other two (Cook and Stanislas) won’t be available for the weekend."

Parker also confirmed both Jefferson Lerma and Ben Pearson had shaken off knocks picked up during the 1-0 win over Cardiff.

Discussing the good health of his squad, Parker said: "It’s not luck, it’s hard work. It’s good work.

"The staff and what we have here in terms of injury prevention, strength, the gym work, the work we do on the pitch, how we work with the players in terms of the work we put in and we prepare them for obviously what they’re going to in the games really.

"You’re always going to find you’ll get injuries and you’re going to pick up injuries in the season.

"We try and reduce that risk by working out our training loads. My staff are obviously onto that on a daily basis really, monitoring each player individually, what they need, what they don’t need, when to come off and when to go on them, strength programmes.

"So I think all in all, that puts players in a good stead to get through the season and certainly try and stay injury free."

Cherries host Luton Town on Saturday (3pm).