PHOTOS: Van Dijk on target as Saints defeat FC Twente

At the scene of their 10-0 mauling of lower league side KVV Quick 1920 last pre-season, the Sportpark Vondersweijde, Saints squeezed past FC Twente 2-1 thanks to Virgil van Dijk’s first half strike and a fortuitous and rather farcical goal from Sam Gallagher.

Puel decided against selecting any of the four Saints players that have so far come back late to pre-season after representing their countries at Euro 2016.

Shane Long, Steven Davis, Fraser Forster and Ryan Bertrand will instead likely be pushing for their first appearances under Puel against FC Groningen on Saturday in the last match of the club’s tour of Holland, while Jose Fonte and Cedric Soares will return next week after their triumph with Portugal.

Puel stuck with what is most recognisable as a 4-3-3 formation for the last two friendly wins over DC United and PEC Zwolle, but experimented with a different system against Twente, their second of their three Eredivisie opponents this week.

Saints were set up from the start with a four-man backline, with a diamond midfield four in front, which saw new £12m midfielder Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg stationed at the bottom, with Harrison Reed and Jordy Clasie positioned just ahead on the left and right and Dusan Tadic sat behind the strikers Charlie Austin and Jay Rodriguez.

It meant the majority of Saints’ width came from the full-back positions, with Sam McQueen and Cuco Martina pounding forward at every opportunity.

Puel is clearly in the early stages of trying to implement an alien system to his players, and it looked clunky at times, with the shape of the midfield hard to fully establish – although that is to be expected being that it is the new manager’s time to experiment with his side.

Such was Saints’ commitment to getting the full picture on how the team are developing in this pre-season that they hired out a cherry picker for an analyst to get a better view of this game from above the main stand at the neutral lower league stadium where this match was hosted.

Danish international Hojbjerg, on his first start for the club, was very competent and looks every bit the real deal, with a good range of passing and a willingness to get down to defensive duties as well as producing bursting runs to aid attacks.

In a half absent of real clear-cut chances for Saints it was Van Dijk that put the tourists ahead after staying up in Twente’s box following a corner, with a dinked right-foot volley from  Tadic’s curled ball over from the right flank on 16 minutes.

Twente, the former club of Martina and Tadic who finished 13th in the Dutch top-flight last term amid financial woe, provided a number of dangerous moments to the goal of youngster Harry Lewis, with Fredrik Jensen and the impressive Hakim Ziyech, who has been linked with Saints this summer, hitting shots wide of the target.

Lewis made a solid save late on in the first period from Jari Oosterwijk’s effort.

Puel made just four changes at half time, rather than making the customary pre-season friendly eleven-man swap, with one of those substitutes Nathan Redmond almost making it three goals in two games after his brace against Zwolle as he latched onto a Tadic through ball before hitting just wide of the Twente post just after the break.

It was then just past the hour mark that Puel made six changes, with a youthful side tasked with seeing out the match.

It was striker Gallagher, a player very much hoping to impress Saints’ new manager after getting scarcely getting a sniff at the first team since Mauricio Pochettino’s departure in 2014, that gave Saints a rather lucky second goal.

The former MK Dons loanee leapt for the cross from Matt Targett and, as he did, the Twente goalkeeper Nick Marsman came to claim what looked like a straightforward catch but couldn’t keep his grip on the ball, allowing it to slip bizarrely through into the net on 69 minutes.

Saints couldn’t hold on to their two-goal advantage and conceded with 15 minutes left as Ziyech, the Morocco international, zipped in an in-swinging corner that Lewis could only palm into the path of Peet Bijen who stabbed the ball into the roof of the net from close range.

Saints team: Lewis, Martina (Valery 61), Yoshida (Stephens 61), Van Dijk (Jones 61), McQueen (Targett 45), Reed (Romeu 45), Hojbjerg (Hesketh 61), Clasie (Ward-Prowse 45), Rodriguez (Gallagher 61), Austin (Redmond 45), Tadic (Isgrove 61).