Ronald Koeman insists he has total faith in his team – but has warned that no club can expect to regularly gel together a new squad as quickly as Saints did last summer.

The spotlight was well and truly on St Mary’s a year ago, and expectations were low, following a major overhaul of the squad.

There has been far less attention on Saints this year, but still a significant turnover in the squad, particularly in the defensive ranks, with key men such as Toby Alderweireld, Morgan Schneiderlin and Nathaniel Clyne leaving while Fraser Forster has a significant injury.

Saints have of course replaced most of those players, and added further depth to the squad, but last year Saints produced a remarkable feat in gelling together new players very quickly.

Koeman is trying to do the same again, but knows in football it very rarely happens as it did for Saints.

“That was exceptionally good, because the adaptation of most of the players – most of the front players – was exceptional and now in the whole organisation in the team it’s a little bit different,” he admitted.

“We don’t have doubts about the qualities of the squad, I don’t have doubts about the new players, but some ones need a little bit more time than other players and that’s normal, but we know exactly what is going wrong.

“I’m not nervous, I’m convinced in the team and the players and we will show that in the next couple of weeks.

“When you do it one time, you will not say that the next time it will be the same, but I’m realistic and we know, we compared it to last season, we were two games, one point. It’s now the same.”

Saints are tonight aiming to continue their good form in the Europa league as they welcome Danish league leaders FC Midtjylland to St Mary’s, following a 3-0 top flight defeat to Everton on Saturday.

“One is that we didn’t have really the good organisation in the set-pieces because Everton scored a great goal, a great counter attack, with the first goal,” he reflected.

“We gave them too much space and we were killed by three moments in the game, and all about counter attacking. Very good counter attacking, I have to recognise that, in the team two goals.

“I knew already maybe the problem because if you talk about the defensive strengths of the Southampton team, what we had last season, and a big part in the clean sheets, then you are talking about seven positions.

“In my opinion the defensive organisation is the whole team but the main part in my philosophy is the goalkeeper, the four defenders and the two control midfield players.

“Compared to last season, last Saturday, and somebody mentioned the name of Schneiderlin, he was one of five different players we had last Saturday. Then it’s normal you lose something.

“I don’t have any doubts about the players of those positions but it needs time, and the whole team needs the time to develop like last season.”

He added: “Expectation was different last season than it is for this season.

“If you miss five of the seven that’s in my opinion one of the reasons that we get already five goals against us in two Premier League games.

“In Europe we showed our strengths in offensive in the two games against Vitesse also our defensive, but the (Midtjylland) game will be more difficult than the Vitesse game.”