PAUL STURROCK has challenged those conducting a whispering campaign against him to step out from the shadows.

The Saints boss was refusing to blame recent national newspaper stories of disunity for Saturday's 2-0 defeat at Aston Villa.

But he admitted they had caused a certain amount of unrest in the camp.

He said: "Someone out there has decided that causing unrest at Southampton Football Club can benefit them.

"When you read things in papers that you know are untrue it does cause unrest, it does put a media-microscope and a stress on players that they don't merit and don't deserve.

"I don't know where it is coming from, but what surprises me about all this is that these people don't come out and ask me what I'm thinking about the scenario.

"They just print what they are told as gospel and truth.

"That's the galling thing about it because people read papers and surprisingly enough they normally believe the papers - it sticks in their minds."

Sturrock says he remains concerned only with how the stories are affecting his team.

"It is just unfortunate for the players," he said.

"Football managers are football managers and will handle all that kind of pressure.

"But the players did not need the microscope put on them.

"When we chatted about it earlier in the week people were wondering where it had all come from.

"I know it's untrue, the players know it's untrue.

"At the end of the day, it has been a media-hype thing."

Sturrock insisted that Saturday's result was purely down to a poor performance.

"It doesn't help after a poor 45 minutes because everyone is putting two and two together to get five," he added.

"But I'm not going to use this in anyway to put on our performance.

"As a team, defensively, we were very poor in the first-half and that's why we lost."