Ronald Koeman could afford himself a smile of satisfaction after Saints defeated Arsenal at St Mary’s.

Having endured some tough weeks as Saints lost five on the spin, he has guided his team right back to form, which has been topped off by picking up a hugely impressive four points against Chelsea and Arsenal.

The win over the Gunners was certainly something to savour for the Saints boss.

He said: “Yes (I enjoyed that) very much.

“A fantastic performance of the team out of a good organisation.

“The game was in the first half in balance. A great goal of Sadio and, after that, Arsenal had to take maybe a little bit more risk.

“After the second goal we had to kill the game because we had a lot of good chances to score the third and kill the game.

"The goal was outstanding. Fraser had one or two great saves at 2-1 of Sanchez and that means a fantastic team performance against Arsenal.

“If you make as manager some little critics to your players after the game that we had to score more goals, it’s a little bit a strange feeling.

“Well deserved and it’s nice to start new year like this. We enjoy it, but Sunday (against Ipswich Town in the third round of the FA Cup) is a new game and we have to prepare that.

"This was very enjoyable. Fantastic.”

Saints were without Morgan Schneiderlin and Nathaniel Clyne for the Arsenal game but made light of the loss with an excellent performance.

“Scoring two goals against Arsenal is a good quality but when you have those kind of good chances you have to score the third because then they don’t believe in a positive result in that moment,” added Koeman.

“That was a pity because if you get seven, eight, nine big chances then you have to score at least three times.”

Sadio Mane bagged the opening goal, his third in three games, and Koeman was very happy with a quality finish.

“It was difficult because I was expecting a cross maybe to Graziano in the box and he take the risk to try to score with his left,” he admitted.

“Maybe it was a little bit the wind which made it difficult for Mertesacker to take out that ball in the goal, but great goal.

"After that, the team was more comfortable in the game and that was important.”