Ba­hamas’ 22-man ros­ter was set to be named yes­ter­day, and was ex­pect­ed to in­clude five over­seas-based play­ers in it, as they pre­pare to take on T&T on Fri­day in a key CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League Group C clash at the Thomas A Robin­son Na­tion­al Sta­di­um in Nas­sau, Ba­hamas from 4 pm.

With just three points to date in third po­si­tion in the group, the Ba­hami­ans can on­ly reach nine points if they can win their next two match­es, which will en­sure that they stay in League B in the re­gion.

Vet­er­an ‘Swiss Knife’ Lesly St Fleur has re­turned to the team along with mid­field­er Christo­pher Rah­ming and will be hop­ing to guide the young squad in­to this next win­dow.

Speak­ing af­ter a train­ing ses­sion Tues­day, St Fleur said: “Play­ing with the young guys is a plea­sure – to do so with my ex­pe­ri­ence and to give my knowl­edge to them about the game is some­thing that I wel­come. They are the fu­ture. It’s go­ing to be an ex­cit­ing game, know­ing that we drew 0-0 with them the last time we played here. They have some­thing to prove so they are com­ing to play hard, and we will be ready for the task ahead.”

Rah­ming on the oth­er hand is an­tic­i­pat­ing a good game.

He said: “We have to win these games to stay in League B. I am hop­ing we get con­trol of the game ear­ly on Fri­day, en­sure that every­one gets a touch on the ball ear­ly and build up con­fi­dence. That is one thing that we didn’t do dur­ing the Trinidad game the last time, where it seems we were afraid to pass the ball. That is the main fo­cus for me.”

Ba­hamas coach Nes­ly Jean said he and his coach­ing staff, which in­cludes Kevin Davies and Av­ery Kemp, have been look­ing at the new play­ers over the past few weeks, in­te­grat­ing them in­to the team’s ses­sions.

“We had some friend­ly games against Turks and Caicos, so it was good to look at them. We were able to look at the team and see how far we are, and how far we are with the new guys. I am look­ing for­ward to see­ing these play­ers come in and per­form well. I want to see them step up to the lev­el that they have been play­ing over­seas and bring up the lo­cal guys to the same lev­el. Once every­one is on the same page, I think we will do well,” Jean said.

He fur­ther ex­plained: “Some of these guys felt the Gold Cup for the first time, a few years back. They are ex­cit­ed about the games com­ing up. I think we have a chance as well look­ing at the points in our group. I feel like if we make that step and work hard and give every­thing on the field these two games, we will have a chance to go through to the Gold Cup.”

The Ba­hamas sits in third place in the group with a 1-3 win/loss record and three points. T&T is in sec­ond place with a 3-1 record and nine points. In its sec­ond game in this win­dow, the Ba­hamas will head to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines (SVG) to play that na­tion.

SVG sports a 0-1-3 win/draw/loss record and has one point. They sit in fourth place in the group. Ba­hamas’ on­ly win in the group came against SVG, a 1-0 vic­to­ry.