Trio edging closer to return

Full-back Larios has been absent since November, while Armstrong and Walker-Peters have been ruled out since the start and end of January respectively.

With a return against Wolves this Saturday unlikely, the Saints boss provided an update on their fitness.

“We’ve got a pretty strong bill of health, with the two new lads and Mislav Oršić playing in the [under-]23s last week, everyone is a bit more up to speed.

“We’ve got a few that weren’t anywhere near match tempo and that’s why we had to be sensible with them, albeit scrutinised.

“It’s a bit early for Juan. The other two [Armstrong and Walker-Peters] are a lot further ahead so, how early it is Saturday to play them, because they’re important players, again, not because we don’t like them or think they can’t improve the team, it’s about putting them into games when they’re ready so that’s what we’ll do.”

Jones is also pleased with the integration of deadline day signings Paul Onuachu and Kamaldeen Sulemana, with the duo completing their first full week of training having made their debuts last weekend just two days after arriving in the country.

“We brought them in to add more potency and we saw that on day one, they trained with us for about 35 minutes. Bearing in mind, Pual has played a lot more football but had a week of transfer speculation, of medicals, of immigration, the passport office, signing documents, doing everything bar training, so his first exposure of the week was with us on Friday.

“They played more than we would have liked at the weekend. Sulemana has played less than Paul, but is potent, is aggressive, is everything we want and has had a real good week. Again, we have to look after him, we can’t just flog him, because we’ll lose him but he’s far, far closer now to being the potent player we really want.”