Northampton Saints and England lock Courtney Lawes is nearing a comeback after more than two months on the sidelines following a head injury.

And he was missing from the England squad for the autumn internationals.

Lawes has been back in training for two weeks and could possibly make the bench for Saturday's European Champions Cup game at French side La Rochelle.

"Courtney trained a lot last week and we said we'd leave it up until the last main training day, which was Thursday, for him to decide whether he felt ready to play [against Gloucester] or not," director of rugby Phil Dowson told BBC Radio Northampton.

"He didn't feel ready and I'm more than happy to respect that and give him the time he needs to get training minutes under his belt and make sure he's ready.

"We'll give him the same opportunity this week. Courtney knows Courtney better than anyone else and when he says he's ready, then he'll be involved, but he's unlikely to start [against La Rochelle] considering how long he's been out."

Saints will begin their European campaign after losing their past two Premiership matches and intensive discussions have been taking place to try to bring about an upturn.

"I challenge the coaches around 'what are we coaching', 'how are we coaching it', 'why are we not seeing improvements in certain areas', 'what do we need to do differently', 'have we got selection right', 'did we get the preparation time right', 'are we in the right mindset' - all those different questions," said Dowson.

"We have a fairly heated debate depending on who disagrees with what, or agrees, and we come up with an action plan moving forward and speak to players in smaller strategy groups, where we get the ideas of the defence lead and attack lead and see how they felt about it.

"This week we've had a meeting to disseminate some of that, see if that changes anything from our original meeting, and then feed forward into how we can get better."

He added: "We have a group of players who are emotionally invested in what we're trying to do, who are desperate to play and win for the club, so I don't think there's a lack of confidence in the coaches and the environment."