Ronald Koeman conceded Saints made life difficult for themselves at Aston Villa but was delighted to come away with three points to keep their season alive.

Saints fought out a 4-2 victory at Villa Park in a very tough atmosphere with the home crowd turning against their already relegated team, at times even cheering for Saints.

It made it a very unusual day, and Koeman conceded he had never known an atmosphere like it during his long and illustrious footballing career, and by the end he was just delighted to get the job done.

He said: “It’s always strange to see the atmosphere. Normally there is more ambience in the stadium and the support to the home team was a little bit strange but our job was to win the game, to play football, to create chances and scoring goals.

“Most of all these aspects we did.

“Still we make it difficult for ourselves. To concede the 1-2 before half time and the 2-3 before the last five minutes.

“It was good enough for three points.”

Dusan Tadic scored twice with Shane Long and Sadio Mane adding the others.

It was a strange game and a strange performance all in all as Saints struggled to keep the intensity in the match.

“Maybe from the start because we had a lot of ball possession and they didn’t press, they were waiting on the half and to stop our ball possession,” explained Koeman.

“Maybe then it is a little bit of a normal reaction that you think you can do it in an easy way.

“Ok, we score four goals and that was what we need because one of my criticisms last week was that we only scored one goal and four goals away from home is a good number of scoring goals.”