Ralph Hasenhuttl insists Southampton need to get back in the groove fast

Southampton boss Ralph Hasenhuttl knows it will take a bit more than just refuelling his squad to get them back into top gear for Sunday’s FA Cup quarter-final against Manchester City.

After a seven-match unbeaten run in all competitions, the Saints were handed a reality check with three straight Premier League defeats – including one at home by relegation battlers Watford last weekend.

While taking on City for a place in the FA Cup semi-finals at Wembley brings with it a whole different set of problems to tackle, Hasenhuttl feels his players must quickly regain focus on fine tuning their own performance ahead of the international break.

“In every game (we lost), something different was missing, but the fact is that we haven’t played on our highest level in all three games,” he said.

“The question should be more why we didn’t do it and then ‘what can we do to make it happen again?’

“It is not like you speak about a car that you put some different fuel in and suddenly it runs better, you have to find the margins that were missing and then learn to reach this level which we had once again.

“This is something (we face) from the Premier League every week, that is clear.

“We had games where we couldn’t find our rhythm or where we have been stopped with different way of killing our rhythm. But Sunday will be a completely different game against a very good team.

“We have had games against them when we had 50 per cent possession, which is outstanding, but we also had games where we had only 28 per cent and we took a point, so everything is possible.

“We have shown in these two games (against City) this season that we are able to draw against them, but on Sunday we need to win.

“We have both had a week to prepare for this game