Mauricio Pochettino admitted he suffered a sleepless night after Saints’ defeat to Tottenham but says there is no magic formula to returning the team to winning ways.

Pochettino wasn’t attempting to find excuses for his side, despite a nasty spate of injuries, as defeat to Spurs made it just two points from the last possible 18.

Saints now travel to Cardiff on Boxing Day before a trip to Everton and a visit from Chelsea on New Year’s Day and the manager knows his side can ill afford to allow things to slide further.

“I had trouble sleeping. I couldn’t really sleep trying to digest the defeat,” said Pochettino of the Tottenham game.

“It was a very tough defeat but we can’t think about it too long because we have to focus on the next game up ahead.”

Things really have turned for Saints who could do no wrong at the start of the campaign and are now struggling for form.

Pocehttino is quite open about the situation and is desperate to change it around against a Cardiff side who have been in the headlines due to the uncertainty surrounding the future of manager Malky Mackay.

“Our biggest challenge will be to recover our winning ways,” he reflected.

“We can’t really be thinking about Cardiff or what’s happening at their club.

“Our most important target is to recover our level, to recover our winning ways and to recover our players collectively and individually and think about what this club does. We can’t really be thinking about anything else.”

When asked as to how Saints can change it other than get players back fit again he said: “We just have to work at it. There is no secret formula to change the situation.

“We have shown in the past that when we have a fully fit squad that we are a very solid team and a very competitive side and we need to recover that fully fit team.

“There have been various reasons that after the last international break and the game against Arsenal things started to go a bit on the downside and now we need to invert the situation, try to understand the situation and invert it as quickly as possible and get back to winning ways.”