Nigel Adkins is pleased to have the opportunity to rotate his squad for the FA Cup trip to Millwall.
The gaffer was able to welcome new signing Tadanari Lee into training on Thursday, and subject to one final hurdle, Adkins hopes to have the striker available at The Den.
He told Saints Player: "All being well he can be involved in the weekend's game with Millwall. We are still waiting for the international clearance to come through which has to be done by midday on Friday, and we are hopeful that will be done.
"He has integrated very well with all the players. He has a superb attitude and is very quick, his conditioning we still need to improve because he hasn't played for a few weeks, but we are hopeful we can get him to the level we need to very quickly.
"We are expecting a big impact to be honest with you. We are really pleased that he has come in and joined in with us in training today, we have had some game situations that we have been running through and he linked up very well with Rickie Lambert.
"He appears to be very intelligent, already in training his scanning and awareness are some of the best that I have seen. His head is always moving to make sure he is aware of what is around him and he makes very intelligent runs and those are things that we picked up when we watched him.
"He is very energetic, very lively and very quick and always looking for an opportunity to score a goal, it is still early days, but I am looking forward to seeing what he can do."
Meanwhile, Rickie Lambert is free to play again after completing his three match suspension, but Adkins wouldn't show his hand as to whether the club's top scorer will be thrust straight back into the action on Saturday.
"There is the quandary for everyone! We have got ourselves into a great position in that we are second in the league, and we want to go and win this race. The FA Cup is a great historical competition and one which has been good to Southampton in the past and we will want to win it.
"I have a few questions I will be asking myself on how I get the right team selection with that in mind, along with the fact that we have big games coming up next Tuesday and Saturday.
"Rickie has been working very hard with Nick Harvey in the strength and conditioning department whilst he has been unavailable.
"He has had a little breather from competitive football, but he has been working very hard and he can't wait to get started again."
Nigel did however, confirm that Jos Hooiveld will miss out after sustaining a hamstring injury against Leicester on Monday night, but in better news José Fonte has returned to training.
"He has trained today so we will see how he reacts to that. We have talked about the important games that we have got coming up, so we need to keep that in mind.
"Jos has got a hamstring injury so he won't be fit for this weekend's game. I don't normally like letting the opposition know, but I think it was pretty obvious when he came off on Monday night that he wouldn't be fit for Saturday's game.
"On the 30th of this month Dan (Seaborne) will be able to come back into the training ground environment so that we can get him used to training again, so we will see how quickly he progresses through that.
"It depends on how he reacts to the physical demands that will be placed on him as to how quickly we will see him back."
