PAUL Sturrock will have a close look at Ronny Johnsen in training this week before deciding whether to offer the veteran defender a contract after admitting he was "well off the pace" against Chievo on Saturday.

The Norwegian international centre half, who linked up with Saints on a trail basis on Friday having been released by Aston Villa at the end of last season, came on for the last half an hour at St Mary's but clearly found it tough going.

Johnsen has been training in his native Oslo for the past few weeks but at 35 still has a fair way to go to get to Premiership fitness.

Sturrock said: "I think Ronny's shown he was well off the pace.

"I think he'd be the first to agree he hasn't done any real stamina work and it did look that way as far as the sharpness was concerned.

"We've had a chat about it and we did feel that in putting him on for half an hour we were taking a wee chance with him not having done much.

"He's going to train Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday with us and we'll see how he is from there."

Despite hot conditions Sturrock felt the summer's hard work was paying off and was generally pleased with the performance against the Italian Serie A side.

"In the first half things we were working on we started to see," he said. "We brought our width into the game and we linked up quite well with our front players, and we got ourselves in the right areas.

"In the second half I thought the heat became a factor and the back four dropped off ten yards and the midfield just couldn't get about the Chievo midfield as they did in the first half, which meant we were always on the back foot.

"We were very sloppy for a 20-minute spell in there, which was disappointing."

Sturrock added: "Mikael Nilsson did very well. He looked very confident on both sides of the pitch and I was very pleased with him and I think he'll be a great asset for the football club.

"Jelle has been a bit unfortunate because last week he felt weary but in the 20 minutes here he showed that exuberance again and that wee goal will be a great benefit to him.

"I felt Peter was Peter. A lot's been asked of that lad coming into the Premiership at a young age and there are still big holes in his game he has to work on but I was pleased - his linkage was good and he got himself in the right areas.

"Fernandes is a player you need in your team because he sees things, he keeps the ball, he's threads passes through for people to score goals.

"I had a wee look at him on the left and he looked far more comfortable on the right.

"Nilsson has proved he can play on either side. Anders Svensson has made a commitment to play on the left so we have options - options that we probably didn't have last year.

"David Prutton was excellent as well - he did the simple things well."