Mark Hughes insisted Saints were giving additional motivation by the remarkable events that led up to their crucial win at Swansea.

Saints firstly had their booking at the Swansea Marriott cancelled in mysterious circumstances, then had no police escort as they battled rush hour traffic to make it from their new hotel which was further out from the Liberty Stadium.

Finally, upon arriving at the ground, Saints were told to wait on the coach for up to 25 minutes as Swansea’s team were due to arrive at the same time.

Hughes was having none of it, told the driver to open the door and led the squad on a determined walk into the stadium.

He said: “I am not for one minute suggesting Swansea had anything to do with that but maybe it’s overzealous Swansea fans in positions to affect our hotel booking maybe.

“Those things you can use to your own benefit and use it as a motivating factor.

“We got held up a little bit outside as well because we were first here on the coach and supposedly we were supposed to wait for Swansea but we weren’t going to do that.

“We were focussed so we got off the bus and walked the 100 yards into the ground.

“We weren’t to be denied or messed about tonight.”

Of the walk into the ground he added: “We were getting held up.

“We were on time and we have got timings we want to stick to.

“We were a little bit worried and had already been on the bus for an hour.

“We were ok with the traffic and were here on time and they were trying to hold us up so I said we’ve just got to get off.

“The point was made.”

Victory has all but secured Saints Premier League safety, but Hughes is not prepared to take anything for granted.

“Those celebrations shouldn’t be misinterpreted. They were emotion as a consequence of winning this key game,” he insisted.

“We had to win and we understood that and it wasn’t that we were celebrating staying up because there is still an issue to be resolved in that regard.

“There is a little bit of a cushion but we are playing Man City and we have to be careful because if there is one team in this league who has the capability of scoring a lot of goals it’s Man City.

“We have done what we needed to do but there is still work to do.”

Hughes made a decisive change as he took off the injured Jan Bednarek and replaced him with eventual match winner Manolo Gabbiadini, changing from a back five to a 4-2-3-1 system.

“It sped it up by about five minutes I would suggest,” he said of the switch.

“We needed to win the game and at some point I knew the likelihood was that we would take one of the centre halves off and get a forward on and see where that took us.

“It probably forced my hand five minutes sooner than it would have done.”