Kane and Taggart back in frame at Showgrounds

The midfield duo were suspended and transfer-listed recently following an alleged breach of club discipline.

But the pair have been reinstated to the senior panel and played in a midweek reserve fixture.

“Tony Kane and Gavin Taggart are back in and everything has been cleared up,” said Ferguson.

“The pleasing thing is that the previous week, for the first time we had 22 or 23 players at training.

“We’ve had Mark Magennis, Gary Thompson, Stephen McBride, Alan Blayney and Kyle McVey back from injury so we have a big squad and there’s good competition for places.

“We had eight guys in tracksuits in the stand who trained beforehand on Saturday so the players who are in the team know that if they don’t do a job, there’s someone knocking at the door to take their place.”

But Ferguson will have to plan without defender Gareth Rodger as United welcome Cliftonville to the Showgrounds this Saturday (3pm).

The centre-back, who has made in impressive impact since signing on loan from Scottish Premier League side St Johnstone, sustained a hamstring injury in last week’s 3-1 win over Glentoran.

“Gareth tweaked his hamstring but he’s a good professional and he knew so he didn’t want to play on with it and we thought the game was at a safe place not to risk it.

“We’ll continue to keep in touch with St Johnstone and assess the extent of the injury,” added Ferguson, who is hoping to follow up on the Sky Blues’ first league win of the campaign at the Oval.

“Saturday was only one result. Cliftonville is going to be desperately hard but if we put the same type of performance in, there’s a chance we can get a result.

“I wasn’t getting too up tight after three or four games. Obviously it didn’t look well but when you looked around there were maybe another three or four teams who had one, two or three points.

“If you can put a run of three or four results together, you could be in the top six - it’s still so early in the season,” added Ferguson.