MAURICIO Pellegrino admits he is satisfied with Saints’ summer transfer dealings – but revealed the club won’t stop looking for potential recruits between now and January.

Saints brought in three new signings in the window, although the best piece of business is arguably keeping the club’s key players at St Mary’s amid intense speculation.

The likes of Virgil van Dijk, Ryan Bertrand, Cedric Soares stayed put on the south coast and in a £36m player shopping spree, Saints brought in Jan Bednarek (£5m), Wesley Hoedt (£15m) and Mario Lemina (£16m).

“I am happy with the squad that I’ve got in this moment,” Pellegrino said. “For me now this group of players is together until January at least.

“They are the best players for me and I will try to work with them and be together in this period of time and try and improve the team on an individual level and as a team on and off the pitch.

“But I’m happy with the squad. I think it’s really competitive. But always we can improve the squad.

“We’ve got really competitive people working in the scouting area and I think we always have to be prepared for the future, but we’ve got a squad which is young and is full of quality.

“I think we are prepared to make that next step this season.”

Now that Saints have managed to keep their squad together, and make a few additions, Pellegrino is eager to continue to imprint his ideas on to the squad.

The Argentine wants to play attacking, high pressing football.

“Every single week is an opportunity to improve but the thing we were doing in the last few weeks, because sometimes a session for the team is really complex, sometimes you change one player and everything changes,” he said.

“For this reason you need time to connect the player to try to put them in the position that they will be comfortable on the pitch and be at their best for the team.

“Sometimes it can look really simple but I repeat, the best thing is the spirit of the team and how we are training. The approach every single day with this spirit and attitude is easier for me.”

Pellegrino was a little frustrated that with many Saints players away on international duty he was unable to really stamp his ideas on the full squad.

Saints had Bertrand, Cedric, Dusan Tadic, Mario Lemina, Maya Yoshida, Jan Bednarek, Shane Long, Steven Davis and Wesley Hoedt all away on duty.

That's a significant chunk of the first-team, but Pellegrino was still keen to press on with coaching the remaining players at Staplewood.

“In this type of week we have to switch on quickly to be focused, to review some concepts, simple things,” he said about the break.

“We have to be 100 per cent focused on Southampton but it is not easy for them when you go to an international obligation.

“They give 100 per cent and a lot of pressure but they have to handle this. The question is how they will arrive mentally and physically for Saturday?”

Such is the Argentine’s commitment to getting his ethos across that he set up a behind-closed-doors friendly for those players not on international duty during the break.

“It wasn’t a normal week for us because we were working with eleven players. We got ten or eleven international players and in the future it could be more, if we think about Sofiane and Virgil are international players normally," he said.

“But at the same time we were working really well. We play a game against Brentford.

"This is the question mark when you have a lot of international players how they will arrive, how they will be prepared for Saturday because some of them haven’t arrived today.

“Some players arrived yesterday and others arrive tomorrow. It’s not so easy to manage this situation.”