Adam Lallana was left scratching his head after Saints somehow managed to lose to Aston Villa and vowed to make amends against Manchester City this weekend.

Saints enjoyed 77 per cent possession in last night's Barclays Premier League clash, having 21 shots and completing almost six times as many passes as Villa.

Paul Lambert's side managed just three shots on target but all of those found the back of the net, with Gabriel Agbonlahor, Libor Kozak and Fabian Delph netting in a 3-2 win at St Mary's.

It was Saints' first home defeat of the season and their third loss in succession - hardly the best preparation for Saturday's encounter with high-flying City.

"It's such a strange feeling now," Lallana admitted. "It's just one of those games.

"I can't wait to go back and play Villa because I thought they didn't deserve to get anything out of the game and we deserved to get a result. I want to go there later on in the season and get three points.

"We've got a big game on Saturday, massive in fact.

"It's not that we're not playing well. We are playing well. We might have a couple of knocks on the back of this game, so we've just got to assess everyone [on Thursday].

"We've got to prepare and get everyone as fit as we can. It is a big month. We've proved we can beat Man City. We did last season, so let's do it again."

February's 3-1 defeat of City was the first victory of Pochettino's reign, when a series of errors at the back cost the title hopefuls.

Last night it was Southampton reeling from defensive mistakes, meaning equalisers from Jay Rodriguez and Dani Osvaldo counted for nothing.