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Heard the joke about Luke Shaw, Adam Lallana, Rickie Lambert, Dejan Lovren, Mauricio Pochettino and the Titanic?

They should never have left ­Southampton. Boom, boom.

And how about the Dutchman who inherited a mess with star players leaving and another mid-table finish the best he can hope for? But that’s enough about Louis van Gaal.

The Saints were the butt of much pre-season humour, but who’s laughing at them now?

When you look at the current Premier League table, do not adjust your goblin bins. It is not a wind-up. You have not woken up in a parallel universe.

Yes, that is really Southampton second in the table, enjoying their best start in the top flight for 31 years. And just in case you were wondering, Saints’ form didn’t tail off in 1983-84: They finished runners-up to Liverpool and reached the FA Cup semi-finals.

Ronald Koeman may have put the ‘rotter’ into Rotterdam when he should have been sent off and then knocked England out of World Cup qualifying in 1993, but he is presiding over a minor miracle at St Mary’s - one that continued with Saturday's win over Queens Park Rangers.

Koeman has proved you don’t have to spend £150million to rebuild a team and make them play attractive football.

It is time we stopped damning Saints with faint praise, patronising them as an irrelevant port at the bottom of the M3 and pretending their bubble will burst.

This lot will give anybody a game, especially their former manager Poch Spice, who is next up for Koeman’s Halo Nation at Tottenham next weekend.

Southampton's summer 2014 departures:

Who needs £27m refugee Shaw when you’ve got Ryan Bertrand? The on-loan Chelsea defender’s opener on Saturday was deserved reward for a full-back’s enterprise.

Who needs Lallana, stuck in a mid-table derby on Merseyside this weekend, when you’ve got Dusan Tadic and his twinkling feet in the top four?

And who needs Rickie Lambert when you’ve got Graziano Pelle, who has now scored 54 goals in his last 63 games for Feyenoord and Saints combined?

Pelle’s acrobatic winner, a sensational triumph of technique and controlling a volley launched from shoulder height, was worth his £8m transfer fee on its own.

The Italian striker, who followed Koeman to Saints from Rotterdam's Feyenoord, said: “I scored some nice goals in Holland during the last two years, but that was right at the top. We won 2-1, it was a tough game, we are second in the table, everything is special about it.

“I don’t like to look for excuses, but I have to be honest - it was not easy for me in the beginning here, and I was lucky enough to come to England for a month before the season started so I had enough time to adapt.

“After one or two games I realised that, in Holland, sometimes 80 per cent is enough, but here you have to give 110 per cent every game.

Saturday's Premier League action in pictures:

Skipper Jose Fonte tried valiantly to temper the euphoria on the south coast, insisting: “We can’t get carried away. It’s only six games, and there are teams out there who spend lots of millions.

“We lost a lot of players and we are a work in progress, but I hope we can keep this momentum and keep improving.”

Manager Koeman’s acumen in the market has been a revelation.

Tadic and Pelle have been inspired imports from the Dutch scene he knows so well. And on this evidence, Bertrand - on a season's loan from Chelsea - should be challenging Shaw for an England place.

Koeman said: “If you are a Chelsea player, that means you have quality. I can’t compare Ryan with Luke Shaw because I never worked with Shaw, but he brings quality, personality and he knows about the pressure of playing at the highest level.”