Saints boss Ronald Koeman will take no credit for the goalscoring exploits of midfield duo Morgan Schneiderlin and Jack Cork.

Despite their numerous qualities, neither player was known for their goalscoring abilities until this season.

Schneiderlin had managed just ten goals in 231 appearances for Saints until the start of this season, which has now seen him bag three in four matches.

Cork meanwhile hadn’t scored a single league goal for the club in more than 100 appearances until Saturday, having already netted his first ever for Saints in the Capital One Cup just a few weeks previously.

You would imagine it’s not just coincidence that this has happened since a new manager has taken over, but Koeman is taking none of the credit.

“To score goals they do that by themselves,” he insisted.

“At the beginning of the season was difficult for Jack, he was not starting, but he was always a good professional and showed the lads how to act with his behaviour to the rest of them.

“In football things can change.

“We need more midfielders and we need everybody in a good physical way and a good football way and he showed his qualities and I am very happy to have players in the squad.

“Morgan I have spoken about a lot.

“He showed his qualities and scored a good goal.

“It was 38 passes to finish like that and there was no better way to finish the game. It was fantastic.”

There was little doubt that it was a fantastic display as Saints dominated Newcastle and the manager was understandably delighted.

“We had a great start,” said Koeman.

“We spoke about it because in our last match at home against West Bromich we didn’t do it in a good way and the tempo was too low. We had a great start, a high tempo and the big difference was we were really pressing in the beginning, we didn’t give them the time to build up.

“We scored two fast goals and that gave us the confidence to play in a good way.

“It was a great performance during the first 45 minutes.

“We work very hard in every session.

“We know we need time, we know we have a lot of changes in the team but that’s the reason you do training sessions to improve the qualities of the players and to bring the qualities of the players together, to have a good organisation in attack and defence.

“It is going well until now.”