Delighted Saints boss Ronald Koeman feels his side have performed ‘beyond their maximum’ to guarantee European football in a record breaking season.

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A 4-1 victory over Crystal Palace on the final day of the means Saints will definitely be in the Europa League next season.

Though they will not know whether they will finish fifth or sixth until Manchester United play Bournemouth after their game was abandoned following a bomb scare, it will still be a Premier League era record high finish and points tally for Saints.

In the end, Saints ended the campaign just three points shy of the Champions League placings in another remarkable year at St Mary’s.

Koeman said: “Of course it’s a strange season, the whole season with Leicester the champions, Chelsea in the middle of the table, Man United and Man City today, it’s incredible that they don’t take that big opportunity to finish fourth in the league.

“We did our job and maybe a better job than anybody expect but it’s difficult because this season is more consistent than last season and our finish is more strong this season than it was last season.

“I think you like to reach, you like to take everything out of your players because then you can be very happy as a manager.

“If you have doubts, if you have problems, if you think you have to do things differently than we did last season then it’s difficult.

“What we did this season is maybe more than the maximum that we can do as a team, and that’s a big, big compliment to the players.”

Saints suffered one slump in an otherwise superb season, and Koeman admitted his delight in how quickly things turned from relegation fears to a battle for European football.

“It’s always difficult to explain why you turn around it,” he confessed.

“We had a difficult time in January, I was a little bit worried, maybe everybody was a little bit worried that maybe it was a season to fight against relegation but we turned it around and that was up to the players.

Daily Echo:

“The difference was that we had already tough competition in the players in the strength of the team.

“That’s the difference in my first season to second season, from the bench really first team players.

“We had the confidence back and the belief back and had some fantastic wins.

“Liverpool at home 2-0 down at half time and 3-2 up finally shows we were very strong and did not have really big injures the whole season.

“Jay was the unlucky player with more injuries and we hope to change that for next season.”