As the pace hots up at the top, Saints face an injury crisis, can they dig deep in the reserves of strength and get three points to keep them up with the front runners.

No one said it would be easy, but Saints list of injuries just seems to never get any shorter with players dropping like flies over the past couple of months to the position we are in now with virtually half of our team on the sick.

But this is when you see the character of a team and perhaps this game against Swansea when we are at our lowest ebb in terms of available players will be a test that Saints can come through stronger than before.

Certainly this has been a season where we have learnt lessons well and hopefully we have taken heed of the one from last weekend where Palace showed us how it was done.

But given those on the injury list, the fact is that Saints have the players available to win this game and although Jack Cork has gone the arrival back of Sadio Mane and Yoshida again gives Ronald Koeman options that he didnt have a week ago against Palace.

He may opt for the formation with three central defenders and push Clyne and Bertrand forward that would probably see Harrison Reed brought into the centre with Ward Prowse and Davis.

That would be a good foundation for the team and he could then go two up top with Elia starting the game alongside Pelle in a floating role with the option of Mane off the bench on his return.

Given Swansea are also a team with their options cut with the departure of Wilfrid Bony and Gylfi Sigurdsson and Kyle Bartley suspended after red cards last week, Garry Monk does have Kyle McNaughton making his debut, but it is a side in transition and therefore the onus is on us to put them to the sword.

Swansea are definitely at a crossroads and the loss of Bony is immense given that of their 26 league goals so far this season he has scored 9 of them, add to that the 4 that second leading scorer Sigurdsson has notched and they will have a distinct lack of firepower on display with the scorers of half of their goals total not available.

Indeed their seems to be an air of transition about the Swans, they seem to have accepted that on 30 points already they won't be relegated, yet neither will they push for Europe, that being the case they seem to have started their summer rebuild already and are writing off this season.

So although Saints are struggling with injuries the fact is that Swansea are perhaps missing just as many who started the season for them, for one reason or another.

The advantage we have is that we are well organised and play to a system, indeed several systems, all we have to do is cut out the defensive errors that riddled last weeks cup game.

So having got that out of our system our task is now to break down the Swans and get an important three points, if we can do that we will take another big step forward and with players returning from injury and perhaps a new signing or two in the next week or so we will have a squad that can win most of the games that we have left.

But first we need to win this one and given our injury problems this will be as tough as any game left with the exception of Chelsea and Man City away.

Its a big test of our strength in depth, but we have come through these tests throughout the season so lets add another.

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