AFC TOTTON will have a Saint in their squad for Saturday's Evo-Stik South West showdown at home to Mangotsfield United.

The Stags are primed to sign midfielder Robin Nicholls, who was appointed academy football operations manager at Southampton FC in September this year.

A one-time trainee with Brentford, Nicholls has played non-League football for the likes of Yate Town, Weymouth, Hanwell Town... and Saturday's visitors Mangotsfield.

On the back of being Yate’s player-of-the-season in 2011/12, he was invited to join Bristol Rovers for pre-season training but opted to focus on his education.

He has a first-class degree in sports performance from the University of Bath and was a student-athlete/assistant men’s soccer coach at the University of the Incarnate Word in Texas, USA, where he obtained a master's degree in sports management.

Totton boss Louis Langdown explained: “I'd spoken to Saints quite a bit trying to get experience for some of their under-18 players (with Totton). They approached us and said they’d got a new member of staff who was looking to play football again.

“Robin’s a tigerish, aggressive type of midfielder which is something we haven’t got in our squad at the moment. We’ve got good footballers but we lack a bit of size and a bit of nastiness in there.

“He’s got good pedigree and will boost the squad. We only had three subs at Kidlington last week and we don’t want to be in a position where we can’t fill the bench.”

The return of Charlie Gunson and Callum Chugg from suspension will also boost numbers this weekend, but Langdown was disappointed that Tuesday’s BigFreeBet.com Challenge Cup tie against Weymouth was rained off.

“I wanted to get Dave Allen some minutes (after long-term injury) and also look to try a different formation,” said the boss. “We won’t change anything tomorrow, we’ll stick with what we know.”