Southampton striker Danny Ings has injured his hamstring

The striker limped off in the first half against Burnley with a hamstring injury and will now miss the Cardiff game as a result.

Hasenhuttl said: “Danny had made a big step after 20 minutes to the ball and then sprinted and he then had a problem with his hamstring.

Saints boss Ralph Hasenhuttl

“This has cost him another two-three weeks to come back, so that’s not good.

“We miss him because he is a good player for us and a good striker.

“We need to have him here, but at the moment, we have to know it will take two-three weeks.

“But the good thing to know is that Pierre is back after his concussion, which is important for us because you saw against Burnley we missed him and his experience in this position and it’s good he’s back.”

Despite Ings’ absence, Hasenhuttl isn’t worried that Saints will struggle to score.

With Manolo Gabbiadini gone, Michael Obafemi not fully fit and Charlie Austin lacking game time, you could see the cause for concern.

Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg

However, Saints’ manager is worried about what’s happening at the other end of the pitch.

Hasenhuttl added: “I don’t think that we show we have problems to score.

“We did it in nearly every game and Redmond is having fantastic performances at the moment where he nearly scores every game.

“We have a few other players who can also score, Prowsey for example.

“I don’t think our biggest problem isn’t being able to score, we should be focused on having more clean sheets in the future.

“We showed in the last games we can always score and, sometimes, it must be enough in a game to score once and not always two or three times to take a win.”

Saints have only kept one clean sheet since the Austrian has been in charge which came in the goalless draw with Chelsea at the beginning of January.

But Hasenhuttl confirmed that the defence will be boosted on Saturday by the return of Ryan Bertrand and Maya Yoshida.

“Ryan is back and has nearly trained in every session,” he continued.

Ryan Bertrand is back in contention to start against Cardiff

“Maya Yoshida is back after the Asian Cup, so we have a few more options in the back-five which helps us to have better training sessions.

“The guys have had a really concentrated week and they’ve shown a mixture of having fun and working hard, you can feel it’s a good passion in every session.

“I enjoy working very much working with this team at the moment and, on Saturday, we want to show we are better than when we played the first time against Cardiff.”