The midfield general will be back in the fold on the South Coast on Tuesday night

Hull City will welcome back Africa Cup of Nations hero Jean Michael Seri for Tuesday night’s trip to automatic promotion hopefuls Southampton at St Mary’s Stadium.

Seri returns to England on Monday and will link back up with his City teammates after Saturday’s dramatic 2-1 win at Huddersfield Town, which saw Jacob Greaves bag a brace to see the Tigers notch up an eighth away win of the season.

The talismanic midfielder has missed the last nine games, seven of which have come in the Championship with his last Tigers outing coming in the 3-2 win over Blackburn Rovers at the end of December, but his return for the trip to the South Coast will come as a significant shot in the arm to boss Liam Rosenior.

While his absence has been keenly felt by City, Seri’s exploits for the Ivory Coast will go down in folklore. Having not played a single minute of the group games, his country scraped through into the knockout stages, sacked their manager and in came Seri to take the tournament by storm, winning the Man of the Match award in the last 16 win over holders Senegal, and playing a crucial role all the way to the final win over Nigeria last weekend.

Seri’s return will come as a timely boost going into the final 14 games of the season, and means, barring the continued absence of Liam Delap, though the Tigers will hope Tyler Morton’s ankle knock he picked up on Saturday is not serious.

“Mika will be back on Monday morning and we’re preparing something really good for him because he deserves it and he’s going to be another really welcome addition back into our group, Rosenior told Hull Live. “Mika will come and add his experience and his quality because I genuinely feel he made a difference for Ivory Coast in that tournament, I watched every game and he knitted the game together. He did exactly what he does for us, now, we need him to come back and do it for us.”

Tuesday night’s trek to Southampton is their first since their first visit to St Mary’s since the Tigers’ penultimate away trip of their doomed Premier League campaign in 2016/17, but almost seven years on, both clubs are fighting to get back into the Premier League and both come into the game on the back of weekend wins.