Ronald Koeman is confident Saints can cope without Victor Wanyama, despite the influential midfielder being banned for five games.

Wanyama has been handed the hefty suspension after collecting his third red card of the season as Saints defeated West Ham at St Mary’s last weekend.

It means Wanyama will be unavailable for the games against Swansea, Chelsea, Bournemouth, Sunderland and Stoke, not returning until March 19.

Saints do have other options in the shape of Oriol Romeu, Jordy Clasie and James Ward-Prowse, but Koeman admitted the ban was a blow.

“Of course very disappointed,” he said.

“First of all for the player by himself, and also for the team, because it’s an important, key player for the team who is normally always stating in the line-up.

“I think he was a little bit unlucky.

“I spoke to Victor and in my opinion that red card was total different to the second yellow against Norwich. In my opinion that was a stupid fault.

“His intention was to play the ball, he missed the ball and the referee made a difficult decision.

“A day later I see a tackle from Flamini against Bournemouth and that tackle was more red than Wanyama so you need to be lucky sometimes.

“He is suspended of five games, a long time, but we have to accept.

“We have enough competition to replace Victor.”

Koeman admitted he sat down to speak with Wanyama to try and encourage him to make better decisions when it comes to deciding when to jump in to tackles.

“Yes of course. I spoke to Victor that maybe sometimes it’s better to stay on your feet and don’t take that risk to play the ball with a tackle,” reflected Koeman.

“If you miss the ball it looks like a very tough fault and tackle.

“He has to learn, he is still young, and I hope this time he will think about and learn from this tackle and next time don’t make that tackle.”

Saints welcome Steven Davis and Matt Targett back to the squad to face Swansea on Saturday, with Koeman still purring over Saints’ display against the Hammers once Wanyama had been given his marching orders.

“It was outstanding, because it was a difficult moment in the game, 11 against ten, not for ten minutes but more than 40 minutes,” he smiled.

“We had a good defensive organisation, everybody was running so much to keep the organisation and to press the opponents and still on our counter attack we had the best chances to score the second one.

“It was outstanding because they had not that space and they didn’t create something that was a big chance for them.”