With the 5pm deadline looming the big question is whether Saints will bring a fresh face in.
With injuries to three midfield players in Schneiderlin, Lallana and Chamberlain being uncertain at time of writing, Saints supporters are wondering whether Nigel Adkins will bring in a fresh face, the blunt answer is even with these three out, he shouldnt need to or at least he shouldnt need to if he has faith in his own judgement.
Forte and to a lesser extent N'Guessan have not yet set the world alight in the two months they have been here, but in fairness they have rarely been given the opportunity to show what they can do and thats worrying.
We now sit with a squad with more than enough numbers but has become predictable, the same core is used in every game except for the usual one change and in the main the same people are substituted by the same people, at times you feel you can set your watch by Adkins substitutions, ie Barnard has just gone off so there must be 13 minutes to go.
If we are not careful we will pay the price for having a large part of the squad that is not just short of match practice, but is demotivated due to the fact they know they arent getting a fair crack of the whip in game time.
The stark reality is that we need to be making better use of the players we already have here rather than just bringing in faces for the sake of it who do not add anything we havent already got, this we did in January with the aquisition of N'Guessan and Forte and it had hindered us more than helped us.
Nigel Adkins needs to look at his squad and freshen it up from within
We are at the point where a fresh face would be good, not just because we need him but because we need to do something different and thats just not happening and their is no excuse for that given the size of the squad.
Maybe Nigel Adkins feels more comfortable just using a core of his squad, almost replicating the situation he was in at Scunthorpe