DARREN Huckerby looks unlikely to be risked at St Mary's on Tuesday night as City boss Glenn Roeder calls on his side to produce a performance full of "fire and energy".

The Canaries used last week as a chance to recharge the batteries, with their absence from the FA Cup handing them a rare blank weekend.

Roeder now wants his players to use their freshness to good effect against managerless Southampton, who overcame City's vanquishers Bury 2-0 on Saturday.

However, Huckerby may well be absent once again as he looks to recover from last week's injection to ease a chronic hip problem.

"We will see tomorrow," said Roeder, when asked if his players had benefited from some time off. "They've had a few extra days off, which is all part of the training regime. It's not a case of giving them days off just for the sake of giving them days off.

"We've got 18 or so games to go. We're well over halfway now. We're not quite into the home straight, but we're getting there. I think there's seven league games in March and there was the opportunity to give them an extra day off last week and we realty started again on Thursday. Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We worked hard, heavy in the amount of work they did. We had Sunday off, and we'll be a bit easier on them this morning and then off to Southampton. So hopefully we'll see plenty of fire and energy tomorrow night."

As to whether Huckerby would return to the squad after missing the 0-0 draw with Leicester last week, Roeder was undecided.

"Possibly," he said. "But if we have to wait a few more days we'll wait a few more days. The team played so well against Leicester it wouldn't be a problem for me if I had to wait a bit longer.

"It's not a course of injections, it's just one. He had one earlier in the season and it helped him for a short while and then the pain in his hip came back. He says he's feeling a bit better. Under the instructions of the surgeon who put the injection in last Wednesday he didn't come out training with us at all last week.

"He has a very, very small tear on the hip joint. Certainly not anyway near enough to consider surgery. We haven't got to worry about that. But with his style of play all being about pace and twisting and turning, when I had a chat with him the week before last and asked how he felt he was doing and playing he said it was causing him a problem. So I thought the best thing to do was withdraw him from action and get him seen to."

Southampton currently find themselves without a permanent boss after George Burley was appointed Scotland's head coach last week. It means Saints veteran Jason Dodd and former England assistant John Gorman are likely to remain in charge when the Canaries travel to the south coast.

Roeder will be all too aware of the threat managerless sides pose after Bury beat them in an FA Cup reply just days after the sacking of boss Chris Casper. But he refused to let it affect his preparations.

"I tend to be more wary when they've just got a new manager," he said. "They haven't got one at the moment. I don't know if there'll be one appointed before the game, but to be quite honest I'm not too worried.

"I spoke to John Gorman, who's a friend of mine, last week and he didn't seem to think anyone was about to be appointed and that him and Jason Dodd would be in charge for the game against us."