Cedric Soares could be returning to the Saints squad for the home game against Liverpool next weekend after missing the best part of two months through injury.
If Cedric returns to the squad to face the ex Saints team at St Mary's on the 19th October he will have been out for 7 weeks since his mysterious foot injury sustained at Leicester City, due to two International breaks in that time he will though have only missed 5 Premier League games, so in some respects Saints have been lucky.
The problem for Claude Puel will be though, not whether the injury has fully healed, but how near to full fitness Soares is.
The nature of the injury has never really been revealed so whether the player has been unable to train or do other fitness work is unclear, also assuming he is nearing fitness now when he was actually able to resume training.
That leaves the manager with a dilemma, he desperately needs a player of the quality of Soares in the side for this game, last season Cuco Martina played and in the first half of the game was ripped apart by Liverpool due to his inability to hold his position and not go dashing upfield.
That left gaps which Liverpool exploited scoring two and in truth it should have been three, in the second half of the game Martina held hs position better, but this tendency is still there this season and it is one that Jurgen Klopp will be well aware of.
At Hull City Yoshida was preferred to Martina, but in truth this is not the answer in that with the pace that Liverpool have, the Japanese player will be exposed, although he can play at full back he is essentially a central defender and doesn't have the engine that modern day full backs need to get up the line.
So if Soares is not fit what options does Puel have, my preferred one would be to switch Ryan Bertrand to right back and bring in Sam McQueen on the left, whilst I,m not usually a fan of square pegs in round holes, I think this would offer pace on both flanks and Bertrand is an experienced enough player to take on this role.