Saints’ stars are being invited in for one-on-one talks with Ralph Hasenhuttl as he seeks to get them to understand his way of doing things.

Hasenhuttl has met with 12 of the first team squad already, discussing his and their thoughts on the future and also analysing video clips of their game.

He and assistant Danny Rohl aim to have completed the chats with every member of the squad by the end of next week and believe it will pay dividends.

Hasenhuttl said: “Until now I had 12 players sitting on my couch for one-to-one chats and I’ll have spoken to everyone by the end of next week.

“I want to know everything about what they’re thinking and we showed every guy specific videos about what we want from players in his positions.

“The player tells me how he works, what his problems are and I spent a lot of time with Danny to do this because it’s necessary to learn about every player and I think they appreciated that.

“In the future if there are questions, I want them to come to me – if they have good arguments, I’ll listen. If they have a good one, we can discuss it, if not, we’ll do it my way.”

It is still early days but Hasenhuttl has sensed improvements in training.

“I am looking forward to the guys showing that they have learned a few things this week,” added Hasenhuttl.

“Physically it is really forcing them. It is about a lot of sprints and a lot of fast runs.

“I think you can build up with every session you make an impact you put in the teams and on the weekend it’s about how long we can stand this kind of football.

“When we feel we lose a little bit of power of sprinting abilities then fall a bit deeper, work together as team, set a good core that is difficult for the others to create chances.

“I think we are one step further and hopefully we will see that on Sunday.”