SAINTS’ disciplinary problems could deepen ever further over the festive period.

They were without top scorer Graziano Pelle for Tuesday’s humiliating League Cup loss at third tier Sheffield United, and Morgan Schneiderlin and Victor Wanyama both miss Everton’s visit this weekend afte picking up a fifth booking of 2014/15 at Bramall Lane.

Now skipper Jose Fonte, Nathaniel Clyne and Sadio Mane are all walking a disciplinary tightrope.

All three picked up a fourth booking of the season at Sheffield United.

A fifth for any of them against Everton would rule them out of the Boxing Day trip to Crystal Palace.

Mane has picked up a booking in each of his last three outings, while Fonte has collected two cautions in his last four matches.

The only positive for Saints boss Ronald Koeman regarding the bookings is that they are all scrubbed off the records after December 31.

But Fonte, Clyne or Mane would still miss one game if they were booked against Everton, Palace or Chelsea at St Mary’s on December 28.

Mane is facing his second suspension of the year if he picks up a fifth yellow in the next three games.

He was sent off back in July while playing for Salzburg in the Austrian League, picking up two cautions in the first half of a 5-0 win at Wiener Neustadt. Clyne has also been booked five times in 2014/15, but one of them was while on England duty which don’t count for club football.

Boss Ronald Koeman recently expressed his dismay that bookings in League Cup count towards suspensions that might take in Premier League games.

He believes a player should only miss a league game if they pick up five league bookings.

Wanyama and Fonte have both picked up two of their four bookings in the League Cup, while Mane and Schneiderlin have one League Cup caution.

Pelle missed Tuesday’s shambles at Sheffield United as he was serving a one-match ban for being the first Saint to accumulate five bookings.

Three of his yellows came in the first three rounds of the League Cup. Koeman recently told his players to avoid “stupid” cautions ahead of a hectic December fixture list.

But Pelle’s fifth booking was collected at Burnley last weekend when he shoved George Boyd in a bid to get him off the pitch for treatment.

Saints picked up five bookings at Bramall Lane on Tuesday, plus Florin Gardos’s straight red.

That is only the second time in six seasons that Saints have collected five bookings in a league or cup match.

The other occasion was last March when Fonte, Schneiderlin, Steve Davis, Dejan Lovren and Nathaniel Clyne were cautioned in the 1-0 win at Crystal Palace.