He seemed at a loss as to whether his front players were indeed capable of achieving those high standards and suggested the return of Saganowski and even Dyer might provide him with the missing ingredients up front.
He knocked back suggestions that Saints' toothless attack was down to playing a single striker up front, explaining that in his system it was down the the man in the hole to play closer to the front man and get on the end of crosses. Indeed he did play 4-4-2 for the last half hour with no noticable improvement.
He was hesitant when asked whether any players, and Surman and Lallana in particular, were due to leave in the transfer window:
"They are looking at some players offers. For the moment I don't know anything, I don't hope they will go because when you look at Surman and Lallana I think your best two players and you hope they stay. You need them to build a team around and that's the only thing I can say."
When asked whether he was looking to bring anyone in, he focused on the players returning from loan as the possible answers to Saints' troubles up front:
"We have always to look at what is possible. Saganowski is coming back, Nathan Dyer is coming back. I don't know what is happening with Stern John, we will know in a couple of days."
Of course if the club does have Saganowski and John's wages back on the books that will put even more pressure on the club to sell their key assets. It could be a long and bleak transfer window.