Saints showed plenty of potential to battle on a number of fronts this season after bouncing back from a Europa League trip to draw at Newcastle.

It has been a demanding week for the squad, who travelled to Holland on Wednesday, played in the Europa League against Vitesse on Thursday, came home on Friday, flew to Newcastle on Saturday, and played the opening game of the Premier League season on Sunday before returning to Southampton.

Though it is only the start of the season, Saints certainly didn’t show any after effects of the Vitesse match in their game at St James’ Park, and indeed came on strong towards the end of the match, much to the delight of Erwin Koeman.

“Ok, we have to do that, but on the other side we played last Thursday, we had travel on Friday, we travelled Saturday by plane with two hours delay, and I am also proud of the boys if you saw the last ten minutes how we are in a good shape,” he said.

“It will be hard but first before the group stage we have to play two other games against I think a very good opponent so we will see.”

Saints now have a full week to recover and train before they welcome Everton to St Mary’s on Saturday.

They expect to have Jordy Clasie available for the game. The Dutchman is back in training again but his slight hamstring injury was not risked for the Newcastle fixture.