Ronald Koeman believes Saints are suffering from their squad being stretched after he named just six subs for the 0-0 draw with West Ham.

The Saints manager again left one substitute’s position unfilled with a host of senior players sidelined by injury.

Koeman says he is short of options to change things up, and is desperately hoping for a change in fortunes in that respect before Saints take on Liverpool a week on Sunday.

“That’s difficult because the possibility to do changes in the team is more difficult,” he said.

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“I think it’s part of football that as a player you don’t play always on your best level but then you need as the manager substitutes really quality players.

“We had with Tadic, with Djuricic with Prowse, but really players like Long, Jay Rodriguez, yeah, if you have that kind of players you can change something else and that is sometimes the problem.

“I think always I prefer to have 18 players and seven players on the bench but if the under-21 players don’t deserve to have a position on the bench then I take 17 no problem.”

Morgan Schneiderlin also missed out on the game against the Hammers but his absence should not extend any further.

“He didn’t pass his last test to be fit,” reported Koeman.

“We expect him back for the next game against Liverpool.”

Sam Allardyce bemoaned the red card for Adrian, claiming he was fouled by Mane in the build up, but Koeman was unsure.

“Ok, maybe it’s a fault on the goalkeeper, I don’t know,” he said.

“It was handball out of the box and then it’s a red card and that’s a good decision, a normal decision.

“I don’t know if it was first a fault of Mane.”

West Ham being reduced to ten men, and effectively nine for the last 15 minutes after Andy Carroll sustained an injury with all three subs used, didn’t seem to help Saints.

“It makes it more difficult on one side, on the other side no because we didn’t have to defend them because Carroll was a little bit injured in the last ten or 15 minutes,” admitted Koeman.

“Then you have to play good out of positions and we had one or two shots out of the box and there was a lot of space to do good passing and good shots on target and you know if you are doing a lot of crosses it is the easiest way for them to defend. You need to play different and that was not good enough.

“We don’t have really the front players but then sharpness and the creativity and the quality what they had in the beginning of the season.”

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