SAINTS opponents Birmingham City have been handed a suspension and injury blow ahead of hosting Tonda Eckert’s side on Monday.<\/p>\n
The Midlands outfit will be without their banned captain at St Andrew’s, while they are also expected to miss their attacking talisman through injury.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Skipper Cristoph Klarer, a Saints academy graduate, was sent off in their 1-1 draw with Derby County, while Demarai Gray had earlier limped off.<\/p>\n
Birmingham manager Chris Davies confirmed the blow to Gray, who scored his fifth goal of the season in the reverse fixture at St Mary’s this month.<\/p>\n
\u201cDemarai was feeling something early in the game, I was aware of it, and we were trying to see if he could run it off,\u201d said Davies.<\/p>\n
“I wouldn\u2019t be able to give you days or weeks on that one, but if you have to come off in a game you can anticipate a few weeks. It\u2019s a knock on his calf.”<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Gray is likely to miss the clash, but club captain Klarer is definitely out after being given a straight red card for a high-footed tackle in added time.<\/p>\n
Davies reacted: “I think it was an uncharacteristic mistake from him. What can I say? Someone who is a colossal leader for us will be a miss, no doubt.<\/p>\n
“That\u2019s him obviously suspended. Christoph has been fantastic, he doesn\u2019t make many mistakes, but that was obviously one of them.”<\/p>\n
Saints take on Birmingham City, one point behind in 15th place, in front of the Sky Sports cameras at 8:15pm on Monday, December 29.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAINTS opponents Birmingham City have been handed a suspension and injury blow ahead of hosting Tonda Eckert’s side…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,12905,748,29405,55206,17303,393,4884,200934,200935,200937,200936,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-657127","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-birmingham-city","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-chris-davies","12":"tag-demarai-gray","13":"tag-derby-county","14":"tag-england","15":"tag-great-britain","16":"tag-injury-blow","17":"tag-klarer","18":"tag-kyogo","19":"tag-stansfield","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115789568726909223","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}