Ronald Koeman says Saints must use their last three defeats to make the next step forward as a club.

Back-to-back losses to Manchester City, Arsenal and Manchester United dented the wild ambition that had been spreading around St Mary’s after such a fantastic start to the season.

Though Saints are still riding high in the Premier League table, Koeman admitted that a realistic aim after the three losses is a Europa League spot, with a top four Champions League berth having previously been mooted around the city.

Saints were a little hard done by to get nothing from the three games.

Against Manchester City they were well beaten, but Arsenal were only finally able to break them down when injury reduced them to ten men while Saints dominated Manchester United but paid the price for errors at both ends of the pitch.

It was certainly a harsh lesson, with performances still good but results not following.

Koeman, pictured, believes Saints must learn from what happened in those games if they are to seriously challenge for that next level.

“We have to learn because we lost all the three games against the big clubs and you have to learn from that if you like to make the next step as a player, as a team, as a club,” he insisted.

“It’s not always about the way of playing because I think we played a good game against Arsenal and a good game against Man United, but the result was negative. That means about detail in football.

“It means we create good chances last Monday but we scored only one time and the difference was we made some mistakes and that wasn’t usual for our team at the beginning of the season.

“Against the big ones they have players that do not need a lot of chances to score and that was the big difference between Southampton and Arsenal and Manchester United.

“They are used and have that experience and we don’t have that experience.

“To have that experience you have to play those games.

“Maybe the next one against Burnley will be different and more difficult. They are a different team in a way of playing and a different situation.”

The United game was probably the most frustrating.

United were well below par at St Mary’s and were there for the taking.

Saints duly dominated and yet came away with a 2-1 defeat to show for their efforts.

It is now less than a month until the return fixture at Old Trafford and Koeman is bullish that his side will not always befall this fate if they play well against Louis van Gaal’s side.

“Of course we can beat them,” he said.

“If we play again in the same way against Man United I think we will beat them.

“It is difficult because we lost but my feeling is how we played on Monday gave us a good feeling but we don’t like to lose.

“If you lose one time but we lost all three games and then the feeling is important to go back in winning because that’s football.

“You don’t get prizes for good football, you get prizes for winning.”