Southamp­ton boss Rus­sell Mar­tin has dropped an encour­ag­ing update on the injury front ahead of tomorrow’s clash against Mid­dles­bor­ough.

Fol­low­ing near­ly three weeks with­out a match, Southamp­ton are back in Cham­pi­onship action at home to Mid­dles­bor­ough tomor­row.

Last time out, Rus­sell Martin‘s men ran out 4–2 win­ners against Sun­der­land thanks to a Joe Roth­well brace from the bench.

The Saints have entered must-win ter­ri­to­ry if they are to claim an auto­mat­ic pro­mo­tion spot, as despite boast­ing two games in hand, Southamp­ton are nine points off Leices­ter City and Leeds Unit­ed.

With a jam-packed sched­ule of nine games in 29 days, Mar­tin needs all of his first-team play­ers fit and luck­i­ly, the for­mer Swansea City man­ag­er is get­ting his key play­ers back at a cru­cial time.

Southampton injury latest ahead of Middlesbrough

Mar­tin con­firmed that Ross Stew­art – who arrived for £8 mil­lion from Sun­der­land last sum­mer – is back in train­ing after being side­lined for most of the sea­son through injury.

As a result, the pro­lif­ic Scot­tish strik­er, who scored 40 goals in 80 appear­ances for the Black Cats, is unlike­ly to be risked as the Saints boss wants him to get a full pre-sea­son under his belt injury-free.

In his pre-match press con­fer­ence, it was also revealed that right-back Kyle Walk­er-Peters and Ryan Fras­er will be avail­able for the run-in.

Walk­er-Peters has been phe­nom­e­nal as an attack­ing force down the right and will sure­ly attract more Pre­mier League inter­est in the sum­mer while Fraser’s role as a super sub has come in clutch.

The pair give Saints a big boost ahead of a gru­elling fix­ture sched­ule, but they aren’t the only duo Mar­tin dropped an update on.

Jan Bednarek and David Brooks are available after international worry

Southamp­ton cen­tre-back Jan Bednarek and winger David Brooks both went on inter­na­tion­al duty with Poland and Wales respec­tive­ly.

Bednarek played 170 min­utes across two match­es; thrash­ing Esto­nia 4–1 in a Euro 2024 qual­i­fi­er play-off before beat­ing Wales on penal­ties in the final to book their place on the plane to Ger­many.

It was delight for the Pol­ish titan, but despair for Brooks, who watched his side lose on penal­ties after being sub­sti­tut­ed in extra time.

Rob Page lat­er revealed that the jet-heeled winger felt ill dur­ing the match which cast doubt over his involve­ment for Southamp­ton this week­end.

Like­wise, Bednarek took a whack in the Esto­nia match and felt a bit of the virus that affect­ed Brooks but man­aged to get through the game.

Mar­tin has now revealed that those issues have sub­sided and both will be avail­able to face Boro.

“Jan­ny took a kick in the first game for Poland before the Wales game,” Mar­tin told the Dai­ly Echo.

“He man­aged to get through the game as good as he could. He also felt a bit of a virus, the same as Brooksy.

“They have both been assessed yes­ter­day and look rea­son­ably good. We have to make sure we are com­plete­ly right, but they are both avail­able for tomor­row.”

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