Ralph Hasenhuttl struck an authoritative tone as he warned his squad they are in for a shock.

The Austrian faced the press at Staplewood for the first time since being appointed Saints manager.

Shortly after the assembled media – which was a bumper turnout – filed out of the training ground’s main auditorium, in trooped the players for their first meeting with their new boss.

Hasenhuttl’s decisive approach certainly brought back memories of Ronald Koeman, and his talk of attacking football was invigorating.

However, even the man himself admitted there will be problems.

Here, Adam Leitch brings you some of the highlights of his press conference.

On how he feels to be appointed

First of all from my side it is a pleasure for me to sit here in front of these ten cameras and a lot of media.

It is a pleasure for me to sit here and I am very proud of the club’s decision for me.

It is a big challenge for me but it is the next step in my career.

It is my goal to get my name known here in the Premier League.

I had a few successful years in Germany and when I left Leipzig in the summer I was thinking about my next step and I wanted to stand in front of a new team in a new language and get developed personally and in my view of football.

That’s the reason I made this decision to come here, to come to Southampton.

I had very good meetings with Ralph Krueger and it was not a disadvantage that he can speak German also so for me it was relatively clear that I can help him in the situation the club is in at the moment.

We find a good solution I think and the history and the philosophy of this team fits nearly perfect to my philosophy of how to work in football.

It was a good decision for me and I am sure it is a good one.

On the task facing him

The first target is to get out of this relegation zone.

The near future has to be move as quickly as you can out of this relegation zone.

It is tough with our schedule over Christmas. I am not frightened about it but the problem is we have a lot of games in the coming days.

If you know me it is work on training sessions and habits and if you don’t have the chance to train it is not easy to change things in the team.

We have just one training session tomorrow evening before the game.

We will pay attention not to overload.

My goal is to develop them as quick as possible but we have to pay attention.

We have one session tomorrow and it’s about getting stabilised very quick and mainly the defence because I saw yesterday it was too easy to score against us.

It is one of the top five teams with Tottenham but I felt it was too easy and you need a good match plan.

Maybe they are not in the best confidence position at the moment.

If we can stabilise this part of our game then we are able to force them a little more like we did yesterday.

On the team spirit at Saints when 3-0 down at Tottenham

It is easy when you don’t have to lose anything anymore. It is easier then.

When you have this character in the first 20 minutes you show what you can do.

The main goal is to work together as team.

I saw interesting mistakes we made.

Teams now need a match plan that fits to them and to find a perfect formation and a tactical summary from a few formations so we can be less easy and force the opponents than they did yesterday.

It takes flexibility and that is the main part and 4-2-2-2 is my preferred system but also 4-3-3 and 3-4-3 and the main goals is to be very active and proactive and try to press very early.

It depends on what quick players you have and how much speed.

We need to look and see how they compare with the system we want to play them.

On what Saints fan can expect from his side

You can expect a very passionate kind of football with 11 characters on the field who know exactly what to do, what they have to show the crowd.

After the match even if we don’t win I am 100 per cent sure they will help us and appreciate what they have seen.

I know there are no guarantees of winning and the only thing we have is to work on chances.

If you want guarantees buy a washing machine. In football there are no guarantees.

If we win they will follow us and appreciate what we do on the pitch and if this relationship works I don’t know the limits for us.

On moving to Southampton

I was thinking about the Titanic leaving here and I hope I don’t hit the first iceberg waiting for me.

I was looking forward and a very good atmosphere talking with Ralph and Ross and the decision was not really difficult for me.

On whether it needs time to implement his style

We have to try. The main goal at the moment is not to overload them because we have one day now to Cardiff but the next two weeks we have about six training sessions and there we have a lot of time to work with their tactical basics but also with their mind.

We will have a lot of video sessions and it will get mind-blowing for the guys.

The training sessions are really forcing you to be really concentrated and therefore they have to speak about it, before and after the training.

I want them to take conversation about it and discuss it and if somebody has an argument, what is interesting is for me is for them to come to me and if he has questions he has to come to me and I give him the answers he wants to have and it is all about input and there will be no rest in the next weeks I can guarantee you.

On whether this is about fitness or mindset

I think the mindset is more important now because in this part now you are able to work now because in physical stuff, during the games and during the season it is very difficult to work on.

From our training sessions it is possible when you do it in the way we want but you are rising your fitness.

When you put this intensity in the training sessions you can raise your physical fitness but I am sure that it is not so easy to develop this part of the game but the tactical part I think we can improve quicker.

On whether the players can expect him to be a demanding manager from the start and what the reaction might be

Yes, they can expect.

I don't know it depends for one guy it is positive because he says 'ok it is perfect for me' for the other maybe it is too intensive, I will have a look.