Kamaldeen sidelined but Saints take strong squad to Hillsborough

Saints manager Martin revealed his squad is in good shape for the trip to Hillsborough, with Stuart Armstrong, Joe Aribo and Jan Bednarek all available after shaking off knocks.

There is a question mark over striker Sékou Mara, but Martin is not short of options ahead of the Sky-televised clash with last season’s League One play-off winners, who finished the campaign with 96 points.

“I think Sékou is the only one we have a question mark over at the moment, so we will see how he is on the grass this morning,” the boss told the media at his pre-match press conference.

“Stuey [Armstrong] is back, Joe Aribo’s back, Jan Bednarek’s back, so that’s really positive for us – three really good players and good characters who will help us, for sure.

“Kamaldeen’s injured, genuinely. He’s good, he’s been smiling, he has good energy, I really like him from what I’ve seen.

“I’ve not seen him on the training pitch very much, unfortunately. He went away with Ghana in the summer, played a bit of football so came back a little bit later, and he’s picked up a small injury.

“It’s not a major one, but it would be madness to rush him back for the first game and compromise anything else.

“He’s a young man with huge potential, and hopefully he’ll be involved very soon. He’s probably a week or two behind the others in terms of what his injury is.”

Martin admits there are some very close calls in certain positions, for a variety of reasons, but is confident he’s already landed on the right starting line-up for the game.

“I think so. We’re really excited about the group. In a couple of positions it’s a really close call and you could probably play either or, but there are guys who have had more minutes, there are guys who are in a better condition to play the first game.

“I think the team is going to look very different from Friday night to Tuesday night (against Gillingham in the Carabao Cup), and then in a couple of weeks’ time it’ll probably look very different again.

“The team we put out, we’ll be really happy and really comfortable with, as we will on the bench, and it’s our job to make sure when the transfer window closes we look even stronger than we do now.”