Cardiff down to the bare bones for cup tie with Cobblers

Cardiff City will be down to the bare bones for Saturday's Carabao Cup first-round tie with the Cobblers due to a combination of injuries and players away on international duty.

The EFL Cup will provide the curtain-raiser for the 2020/21 campaign but the majority of round one ties clash with international fixtures, hitting clubs in the Championship particularly hard.

Cardiff have six players on international duty ahead of Saturday's game at the PTS. Will Vaulks and Kieffer Moore (Wales), Callum Paterson (Scotland), Gavin Whyte (Northern Ireland) and Mark Harris and James Waite (Wales Under-21) are all with their national teams.

Manager Neil Harris is also without Lee Tomlin, Joe Ralls and Nathaniel Mendez-Laing due to injury, leaving him with just 14 senior players.

"All three are unavailable this weekend," he said. "Tommo and Rallsy are on the training pitch, Nathaniel has been missing for personal reasons, I’ll say no more on that.

“Joe and Lee are injuries they picked up in the Fulham game. It’s frustrating but we’ve been really lucky the extent of the injuries haven’t been more severe and an outside chance of being available next week.

"But some youngsters will be involved and that’s fine. We have competition for places already, with involvement of the youngsters and it's great for them to be involved."