Ronald Koeman is trying to focus on the positives after Europa League elimination but admitted Saints “have to win” against Norwich at St Mary’s tomorrow.

Saints have had a stuttering start to the season, and are now out of Europe after their 1-0 defeat to FC Midtjylland on Thursday night.

Koeman admits they desperately need to get a first Premier League victory of the season against newly promoted Norwich to send them into the international break on a high.

“Everyone knows about the difficult start and Sunday’s game is important and we have to win,” said the Saints boss.

“It is important to be focused on the way we play, our qualities and then if we play our level we will create chances and then we have to be more clinical.”

Saints looked short on belief in their defeat to Midtjylland and Koeman admitted his squad are suffering from a lack of confidence.

“That is true, maybe it is about the first results,” he reflected.

“It is difficult in the organisation. You can speak a lot but of course you get confidence if you win games and score goals that makes confidence in a team, it is a little lacking in confidence.”

Koeman was asked what his expectations for the season now are after an earlier than hoped for exit from the Europa League and he replied: “It is the same.

“The expectations are different to last year, people expect more but we have to be realistic with what happened and what we lost in the last year.

“In the first season we changed a lot and after some weeks you improve and develop the players but now we have been playing more.

“Now we have time but it is not what I like but we have time to improve and have good training sessions and we need that.

“That is one of the reasons in the mistakes from the last few days, we have to do less mistakes and learn about it.”

Koeman is hoping to have Victor Wanyama and Sadio Mane available to start against the Canaries.

Wanyama missed the trip to Denmark with a stomach infection while Mane was an unused sub as he wasn’t risked after an injury sustained against Watford.

Koeman said: “Of course you like to have your good players available for the next game.”