PAUL STURROCK felt some of his team allowed themselves to be "bullied" out of Saturday's 2-0 defeat to Aston Villa.

The Saints boss admitted he was "mystified" by the contrast between a dire first-half performance and an improved display in the second-half after goals from Darius Vassell and Carlton Cole had already settled the match.

"Everyone in the stadium would appreciate that you can't defend as a football team like we did in the first-half and expect to win games," he said.

"We just seemed to wait on Aston Villa scoring. We responded much better after the chat at half-time and at least we started to put our foot in.

"We won our headers, we won our tackles and started to pass the ball much better.

"But it's mystifying how we can go out and perform like that from one half to the next.

"Some of the players got bullied a wee bit in the first-half. I do feel we just didn't defend as a unit."

Mikael Nilsson was substituted at half-time on his Premiership debut for Swedish team-mate Anders Svensson, while Yoann Folly was replaced by Rory Delap.

Sturrock said: "Mikael Nilsson got a rude awakening to the Premiership and I do feel the pace of the game kind of flew past him.

"I'm very confident he will get to the pace of the game.

"I just feel we didn't put our foot in enough. Rory came on and won his fair share and had a presence on the ball which wasn't happening in the first-half.

"Any Premiership team, if you give time on the ball they're going to punish you.

"You,ve got to take something positives out of the game and for us it is that we created a few chances in the second-half and looked a more solid unit.

"In the first-half we were not a solid unit. We came out of that game without a booking and I didn't see many tackles being put in.

"I do feel that if we are to be competitive people have to feel there is a presence on them.

"And I don't think their strikers felt they had a presence on them in the first-half.

"There's no pin-pointing on individual performances. As a team unit we were not at the races."

With Michael Svensson still out with his knee injury and Fitz Hall sold to Crystal Palace, Sturrock is hoping to bring in extra cover in central defence as soon as possible.

"We are in negotiations with someone at this minute in time," he added.