Ronald Koeman has urged his side to keep the pressure on Liverpool after a significant weekend in the race for European football.

Saints defeated bottom of the table Aston Villa 4-2 at Villa Park while Liverpool were 2-0 up at home to relegation haunted Newcastle only to be pegged back to draw 2-2.

Though the Reds sit a place and a point above Saints in the table in seventh with a game in hand, they have a gruelling end to the season thanks to their involvement in the Europa League.

With the winners of that competition automatically qualifying for the Champions League, and a top four finish out of the question for Jurgen Klopp’s side, they are likely to prioritise the competition, meaning there is a chance of more dropped points.

That is something Saints could capitalise on, but Koeman insists it is vital to keep up the pressure.

“What you like is that until the end of the season you play for something,” said the Saints boss.

“That’s always better than when the season is over and you need to play the last few games.

“That’s good and it starts by winning a game and to put the pressure to them.

“That’s what we like to do and we did today and we like to do it next week.”

He continued: “For Liverpool it’s a tough schedule what they have with the Europa League and it’s difficult to keep that momentum what they had in the Premier League.

“That’s good because we are close but we need more wins we know.”

Saints face another potentially distracted opponent next weekend in the shape of Manchester City, who arrive at St Mary’s in between their two-legged Champions League semi-final with Real Madrid.

They then travel to Tottenham before hosting Crystal Palace on the final day.

Saints fought out the win 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.”