Saints have prepared meticulously for the challenge of tonight’s game against Crystal Palace.

Their exit from the FA Cup following a third round penalty shootout defeat to Derby gave the squad some rare breathing space with a free weekend and ten clear days between the victory over Everton and this evening’s game at St Mary’s.

After a punishing run of fixtures, it has given them the chance to recharge the batteries and have a proper build-up to the game.

Ralph Hasenhuttl put the squad through its paces last week and has also held a number of video sessions to try and get things right for the visit of the Eagles, who, in contrast, played on Sunday as they knocked Tottenham out of the FA Cup.

“Strange week,” smiled Hasenhuttl. “It is really difficult to think what day it is.

“When you don’t have a game on the weekend it is strange.

“We had a good last week and made two very intensive training sessions with one game 11 v 11 where we looked at all the players who didn’t play as often until now which gave us fresh impressions of some players.

“The last two days we were focussed on the Crystal Palace game and put the stuff in we wanted to learn.

“Tactically it is very interesting against a good organised and balanced team and we need good solutions with the ball and without the ball so we had a lot to learn and teach the players and spent a lot of time with video sessions.

“We had a good mixture of physically intensive training sessions and good mind work in this room and hopefully we will see on Wednesday we prepared it.”

The training game was of particular benefit according to Hasenhuttl.

He was impressed by a number of young players he hadn’t seen much of before, and also worked the team very hard to try and increase fitness levels, which is always a difficult task in the middle of the season.

“We had a few young players also in the team to look at them, how they fit in our philosophy and system,” he reflected.

“I don’t want to speak about single names. I think they showed when we play with different shapes how quick they can switch from one shape to the other. That was important for me also.

“It was a very intense game because if you play like a training game 11 v 11 you have no interruption of the referee so it goes up and down, up and down, very intensive, long running. “That was exactly what we needed last week because we had no game at the weekend and therefore we tried to push them to the limits.

“It was intensive. It was very hard, and it was exactly what we needed last week.”