'We had a bad day at the office'

The former England striker missed his side's best chance of the first half, when he hooked a cross from Neil McCann over the Plymouth bar from eight yards out.

Phillips, whose partnership with James Beattie failed to spark in the scorching conditions, said: "No disrespect to Plymouth, but when Southampton are playing a first division side you would expect us to create more chances.

"We never did that, we just had a bad day at the office.

"We made it hard work for ourselves.

"We were very poor which was disappointing after coming off the back of a decent trip to Sweden.

"We felt we could produce a good performance but full credit to Plymouth, they adapted to the conditions extremely well and we weren't at the races."

Phillips, who had scored in both his tour games in Sweden to continue where he left off the 2003/04 campaign - 11 goals in his final 16 Premiership matches - added: "We didn't perform to the best of our ability in the way we know we can.

"But Plymouth took a bit of a hammering against Portsmouth in the week and this was a big game for them.

"They had their ex- manager coming back and wanted to put on a good performance.

"Full credit to them, they played very well but we helped them play well."

Phillips has set his sights on an improvement against League One side Swindon tomorrow.

He added: "We have to learn from it and go again Tuesday.

"This is the time when you have to iron out the problems and the good thing is we've got a game on Tuesday to try and put things right and work on things.

"Hopefully that will be a different story."