Everton sweating on Joseph Yobo and Tony Hibbert

The right-back will almost certainly miss the Premier League kick-off on August 16 if he does go under the knife, but Yobo is hopeful that he will make a quick recovery.

Everton manager David Moyes was already seething about the heavy international schedule his players faced throughout June, with Yobo, Yakubu, Victor Anichebe, Steven Pienaar and Tim Howard all having to keep their season going until last weekend.

Centre-back Yobo showed little sign of his discomfort as Nigeria stormed through the first phase of qualifying with four straight wins, the captain even scoring the winner in two of them.

He appeared to emerge unscathed following the 2-0 win over Equatorial Guinea on Saturday, but said: "What many people don't know is that I was playing with an ankle injury.

"I have had it for a while and I was supposed to rest it, but we had crucial games to play and we we're short at the back.

"So I just had to force myself to play."

Yobo, along with Yakubu, Pienaar and Howard, will have an extended break before pre-season training because of their World Cup excursions.

Anichebe will be preparing to represent Nigeria in the Olympics so the chest injury he sustained after 40 minutes of the win over Equatorial Guinea will not affect Moyes's plans anyway.

But Yobo is reassuring Moyes that there won't be any long-term effects from playing on with an ankle problem.

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"The best thing for this kind of injury is rest," he said. "The medical team in Nigeria have been great and they helped me to manage it for this period.

"Now I have to give it the rest it needs so I can be ready for pre-season training with my club."

Available players return to Finch Farm next Thursday, July 3, but Hibbert was always struggling to make that date following the damage he sustained against Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium in the penultimate game of last season.

And although he is hoping to boost his chances of returning in time for the new season, he admits he under-estimated the extent of the original injury.

"I'm hoping for the specialist to say that I won't need an operation, and I really want to just kick on from where I am now," Hibbert said.

"It's not like we've held back but we need to know the full extent of the injury before I can start training properly.

"When I did it, it felt okay. It didn't seem bad until the result of the scan, which made it 10 times worse when I actually saw what I had done.

"I even said to them that it wasn't that bad. I've had tweaks in my knees before and it didn't feel anywhere near as bad as them.

"We didn't realise at first how bad it was and then the specialist said it was bad - but it's just one of those things.

"I ruptured my medial ligaments, so they've basically come completely off the bone at the top where the nerve endings are and so that's why I wasn't feeling much pain.

"At the moment I'm doing running, obviously not to the extent of what the other lads will be doing, but I'll probably be able to join in with them.

"It's more or less just straight line speeds at the moment and keeping steady to get my fitness up."

Moyes has sufficient reinforcements in the right-back slot, with Phil Neville able to resume the role he occupied for much of last season - although the captain is keen to stake a claim in a defensive midfield role.

Phil Jagielka can also fill in but the England international will be preferred in the centre-back role he carried out so successfully during his debut Goodison campaign, especially if Yobo's ankle problem is slow to clear up. In terms of bolstering the squad with new faces, Moyes will have a better idea of the business he can do after the government decide on whether to give the go-ahead to the new stadium plans, which is also due on July 3.