Long and Rodriguez miss Sunderland clash

Southampton manager Ronald Koeman has ruled attacking duo Shane Long and Jay Rodriguez out of this weekend’s clash with Sunderland due to injury.

The pair have both been out for a number of weeks now and Koeman has confirmed that the earliest they will be ready will be after the international break that is the next week.

Jay Rodriguez has not featured for Southampton since their 2-2 draw with Leicester a few weeks ago, a game that he only had a brief substitute cameo in the closing minutes. Koeman has now ruled him out for Sunderland this week, however, may return after the international break.

Shane Long on the other hand is more of a longer term absentee as he has not played a competitive match since the last international break, when he was injured playing for Ireland against Poland. He has been back in training this week but the game still comes too soon for the Irishman.

They are close, but still it’s too fast for them to be part of the team.

I hope that the two weeks in the international break give them the possibility to get totally freshness, totally physical wise to be prepared for the next one.

We have good competition in all the positions in the team.

We know we have still the same injuries like Shane Long, like Jay Rodriguez, but we have enough midfield players to replace Victor of course.

He’s a very important player but, okay, we have more of that quality players on the midfield. That’s not a problem and it’s all about to give a good performance.