CLAUDE Puel insists he will take the League Cup seriously, despite being in the midst of a fixture pile-up.

The Saints boss could be forgiven for thinking he could do without tonight’s tie against Crystal Palace at St Mary’s during a punishing run of games, and with a hat-trick of away matches, including a trip to Israel, just around the corner.

However, he insists his squad can deal with it and that he will make a late call on the fitness of his players with youngsters such as Harrison Reed and Lloyd Isgrove waiting for a chance to shine.

He said: “All the time for me it’s important to win, and to win in different competitions.

“I think it’s very important for the future with all the squad, all the players, to have a good participation.

“It’s important to improve these players, young players also, and to make progress together.

“I say that it’s important to keep an idea to improve all the players, and not just ten or 11 players.

“This for me is very important, and I think it’s not possible to play every three days.

“If we give some time of play for all the players they can improve, they can arrive with a good level and we can see a good squad and not just a team and for the future to answer with all these many games it’s interesting for the future.

“We will see the recovery of the players and the possibilities.

“All the time when I put the papers of the list of the players for many games I see also the recovery for every player and what is better for everyone.”

Puel confirmed that Jay Rodriguez won’t be fit to play after the striker picked up an injury during his goalscoring cameo against Sparta Prague.

“Jay, no. It is a little way off when he will come back. We will see for the other,” reported Puel. “It is important to keep a good physical for every player, a good energy also to play this game.

“I think, for example, if you start this game (against Swansea) with the same players that played Thursday we would have lost this game because for me it’s not possible.

“We don’t have for the moment the experience to play every three days because it’s a young squad, young players, and they learn together.

“It’s very interesting to play all these competitions with this squad.”

Although Charlie Austin’s strike sunk Swansea on Sunday to get the club’s first win of the season in the Premier League, Saints spurned numerous chances in the 1-0 win.

Nathan Redmond was guilty of missing a few big chances, but Oriol Romeu isn’t worried about his team-mates finishing skills.

“I think the problem would be if we’re not creating chances,” he said. “We are creating and we believe in our strikers that they are going to score a lot of goals.

“Against Swansea we missed a few clear chances, but that is not something we should be worried about or we will have a problem with in the future.

“Goals will come as long as we have chances.”

The Spaniard is relieved, however, to have Austin firing on all cylinders after netting three goals in two games.

“To have him feeling good to score is very good news for the team,” he said.

“Because he’s back among the goals we just want to make him feel happy and to get more goals from him.”