Martin on Ramsdale, Harwood-Bellis and Liverpool

Southampton boss Russell Martin has been speaking to the media before Sunday's Premier League game against Liverpool at St Mary's Stadium (kick-off 14:00 GMT).

Here are the key lines from his news conference:

• Goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale (finger) and defender Jan Bednarek (knee) will miss Sunday's game and be out for "a number of weeks". Alex McCarthy will deputise for Ramsdale and Martin has "so much trust" in him to perform.

• Martin said everyone at Saints is "immensely proud" of Taylor Harwood-Bellis after the defender scored on his England debut last weekend: "The aim when he came in last year in the Championship - and he was disappointed not to be in the Premier League at that point - was to get there together and give him the best chance of achieving his dream of international football."

• Martin said the club met with [refereeing body] PGMOL to discuss two contentious decisions in the defeat by Wolves before the international break. He said he "still has issues" with Ryan Manning's disallowed effort and a potential foul for Wolves' second goal, as well as the match review panel concluding the decisions made were correct.

• But he added: "It's happened - it is what it is. [Howard Webb] accepted a lot of our points and we had to accept a lot of his, because it's not easy. But I think it was important for us to have a chat."

• On a busy spell of fixtures coming up: "We showed the guys the table how it looked at this point last season, and how much it changed by the end of December. It's such an exciting month. People talk about the difficulty of the games and the level of competition we face in the next four or five games, but it's what we've worked so hard for and we should be excited about the challenge."

• He is therefore not intimidated by daunting games on the schedule: "Teams have shown in recent weeks that you can pick up big results against big teams and good opposition. We're going to have to at some point if we're going to achieve what we want to achieve."

• The Southampton boss said Liverpool are "the best team in the country at the moment on current form" and on Arne Slot's start as boss, he added: "When you go into a club that's built on something for so long with top players that have bought into that, he hasn't changed too much. It's the best management at that point to continue some of the brilliant things they were good at, and put his own spin on it, which he has done."

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