Ronald Koeman defended his record of fielding young players while at Saints after Josh Sims starred on his debut as the Dutchman was defeated on his return to St Mary’s.

Sims was one of the players who took part in an under-21s game against Chelsea during Koeman’s tenure, the day after which the boss criticised the youth side.

Before his departure for Everton in the summer, the Saints hierarchy were frustrated by Koeman’s reluctance to blood some of the young talent he didn’t regard as good enough.

It was somewhat ironic therefore that Sims made his big breakthrough as Koeman returned to St Mary’s and set up the only goal of the game after just 41 seconds.

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Koeman refused to speak about Sims specifically, but did defend himself.

He said: “Maybe the question is to try something I will tell about Southampton what’s not OK.

“I think seven or eight under-21 players make his debut in the first team when I was manager. Think about that.”

Koeman predictably got a fairly bad reception with fans still angry over the way he left the club with a year remaining on his contract despite having previously said he would see out the three year deal he signed upon joining.

He wasn’t too bothered though.

“It was nice to see nice people back but the result is not good, is disappointing and of course I have a good feeling and very good memories about Southampton, reactions of fans, even to lose today will put that in a different reaction,” he reflected.

“Everybody is free and we live in a social life and everybody can give his reactions what he wants.

“I know how the players react to me, the players of Southampton, the staff in general appreciate a lot of what we did together. The rest, that’s football, that’s life.”

Koeman was fuming at the start Everton made in the game which give them a problem they couldn’t solve.

“What I need to say is if you have the kick-off in the game and you start and after two or three passes we lost the ball and finally it ended with 1-0. It’s incredible,” he raged.

“You start a game to control the game and we didn’t and we had bad defending position by the cross and it’s 1-0 and that’s not the way you need to start and it makes it very difficult and a different game.

“The whole first half was not good in positions on the midfield, we had some problems with the strikers and that’s strange because we know how they play and we need more communication, we need to be sharper, we need to react faster second balls and they had already chances in the first half and also we had good chances - the free shot of Gana in the box needs to be on target, the header of Barry.

“We play well the second half and we take the risk and we brought a lot of offensive players and they had chances to kill the game and also we were very dangerous but it wasn’t that day to score the equaliser.

“It is finally 1-0 but the game about the chances and the opportunities for both teams was strange to see only one goal.”

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