Shrewsbury Town will travel to St Mary's on Tuesday after most of their playing squad have now come out of self isolation, although manager Steve Cotterill will watch the game from hospital after being admitted to Intensive Care as his symptoms worsened.

Saints will be relieved that the game against Shrewsbury will be played and that they will not have an enforced change to the fixture list with the trip to Leeds United being reinstated on Wednesday.

The Saints squad is down to the bare bones with another injury picked up at Leicester in Will Smallbone and Ryan Bertrand suspended for the next Premier League game for a 5th yellow card.

Suspension for accumulating yellow cards no longer are spread across all competitions, meaning that Bertrand could play against Shrewsbury and a subsequent game against Arsenal in the FA Cup should Saints win through, but will miss the home game against Arsenal on 27th January, that is assuming that the if the Shrews were to knock out Saints on Tuesday evening, that the away Fixture at Leeds was not shoehorned back into the calendar with both Leeds & then Saints not having fixtures this coming Saturday on 4th round day.

One man who won't be coming down with the Shrewsbury team will be manager Steve Cotterill.

Having tested positive last week, the 56-year-old was admitted to hospital near his family home in Bristol on Friday after his symptoms worsened.

But, after entering intensive care over the weekend, he is now recovering.

"I can tell he's getting better as he's begun to crack jokes," assistant Aaron Wilbraham told BBC Radio Shropshire.

"He's told me to tell the boys to say he'll be watching from his hospital bed, so they'd better be at it."

The Shropshire club, who are 17th in League One, will be playing for the first time in three weeks when they step out at St Mary's, having not played since 29 December.

Saints will be hoping to get a good run in the competition as they did 18 years ago when they beat Spurs in the 3rd round at St Mary's in what was the first FA Cup final played at the the stadium in it's second season.

Photo: Action Images

underweststand added 15:09 - Jan 18 This is one game that Saints could do without - when considering our current injury list, and the fact that Tottenham got bye when their opposition couldn't field a team on the day ....because of covid(?) but we have to play this one - and if we win .. have to play Arsenal twice in three days ... as our Prem. fixture is already on the cards for January 26th... Ralph has admitted that we are short of fit players - but I wonder if has he considered using Josh Sims ?. He scored 4 goals in 4 games for the B team before going on loan to Donnie where he got rave reviews every game. There was a rumour that he MIGHT go to QPR in the window, but as he's back now - and has until the end of the month to prove himself, Ralph could do worse than give him an outing or two before 31st January and make a final decision to keep him or sell.

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dirk_doone added 17:06 - Jan 18 If not one of their players is carrying covid, we'll be very lucky. It's obviously been spreading like wildfire at Shrewsbury and it can take time to show up on tests.
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AirFlorida added 18:47 - Jan 18 Agree with the Covid concerns. We've got so many injuries we can't afford to lose players testing positive. It would good to give FF a game we need his levels up to put more pressure on Alex.
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SanMarco added 09:25 - Jan 19 I had a vague but disloyal feeling that I would rather lose to the Shrews than to Bumnal but hadn't thought that Leeds might be reinstated. Losing to Leicester with a weakened team is one thing but Leeds is winnable - let's play it once we have players back. Good points about Covid - it is all very difficult at the moment. We should probably have been awarded this tie but then would be playing Leeds tonight so a six and two threes I suppose.

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