Ronald Koeman has ‘thanked’ Mauricio Pochettino for leaving him such a good team at Saints and joked he only took over at St Mary’s for ‘a holiday’.

The Saints boss was responding to comments Pochettino made on Catalan radio station RAC1, when the now Tottenham manager said: “It is always easier taking over a winning team which is the case this time with Ronald [Koeman].

“We came here (to Tottenham) and had to reinvent things.

“We always laugh about it because we left a team at Southampton that practically trained itself after a year and a half to come here.

“Here we had to recreate everything that we had done at Southampton, pretty much from zero, but it’s a great challenge.”

Koeman stressed his response was a joke, and that he hadn’t personally heard the interview, only what had been reported, but was happy to give his side of things.

He smiled: “First of all I don’t know exactly because it was Spanish radio I think and if the comments really are like that I don’t know.

“Everybody is free in giving his opinions.

“I am happy in Southampton and thank you Mauricio, I have an easy job and that was the reason I came to Southampton, to have a little bit of a holiday with a good team and good organisation with good players.

“I am joking. No comments.”

With such a high turnover of players in the summer, this does feel very much like Koeman’s team rather than Pochettino’s, and he reflected: “It feels like that, and seriously because we had to make a lot of changes in the team.

“I think the way the club is doing, the structure and organisation in the club, makes it easier for the manager.

“Pochettino, Markus Liebherr, Les Reed, they are doing a fantastic job in Southampton and as a manager you need those people to work good on a good level in a good structure.

“That’s the best quality of Southampton Football Club because we don’t have a lot of people but we know from each other what happens and the confidence I got as a manager was very good.

“We changed the team. We had to change the team because we lost a lot of good players and working with the scouting we brought in good players and the adaptation for the players was easy.

“The team is working well, the spirit is fantastic, but it’s not one person.

“It’s different reasons why Southampton is doing well.”