INTER Milan have sacked besieged manager Frank de Boer just 48 hours before their Europa League group stage match at Saints on Thursday.

De Boer, who only replaced Roberto Mancini at the San Siro in August, has been under enormous pressure for some time, having failed to get an expensively assembled team performing at a satisfactory level.

The Dutchman won just five of his 14 games in charge – one of those being the 1-0 home win over Saints two weeks’ ago.

He leaves Inter 12th in the Italian Serie A after their fifth defeat in 11 league games at Sampdoria on Sunday.

The 1-0 loss was the Nerazzurri's fourth defeat in their last five Serie A matches and left them 13 points adrift of leaders Juventus.

The former Ajax boss, who was linked with the Saints job before Claude Puel was hired in the summer, also departs with the Italians bottom of Europa League Group K ahead of Thursday’s trip to St Mary’s.

Inter will now arrive in England managerless with youth team coach Stefano Vecchi taking temporary charge.

De Boer said on Twitter: "It's a shame it ended this way. To carry out this project I needed more time.

"I want to thank the fans for all the support you gave me during these months. Forza Inter."

A beleaguered De Boer has had to wave away speculation over his future for the last few weeks, and in his last press conference insisted that he had faith in turning Inter’s fortunes around.

“This is just an issue of mentality," he said. “We have a lot of quality but we can't do much when we have the mentality I saw in the first half.

“We have a problem at this moment. I said to the team during the break that we had to change and it looked like another team in the second half.

"I have faith that we can change this difficult time.

"As I said, I've seen a good team many times, but we must have the conviction to do it for 90 minutes, as [in the wins] against Torino and Juventus. We cannot always stay in this form."