Pierre-Emile Højbjerg: No more hiding

Pierre-Emile Højbjerg issued a rallying cry to his Southampton teammates in the immediate aftermath of Saints’ shocking 3-0 defeat at Newcastle United on Saturday.

The Danish international essentially says his colleagues need to get their sh*t together as soon as they’re back in training at Staplewood on Monday morning.

“Now the emotions are running high but when training starts again on Monday, we need to be on it and focus on the next target,” he said as per the club’s official site. “The next ball, the next exercise; do it all to get the win in the next game, that’s the only thing that counts.”

“Every game right now is crucial, with eight league games to go, they are all finals. The last many games were finals too and we haven’t got the results we wanted.”

“We will do everything we can; I have said it before that the club cannot go down, we have to stay up.

“We have to be in the Premier League because that is what we are but the reality speaks for itself and we can’t hide. We can’t get around it. There is nothing for it, we have to show the desire to survive and anything less won’t be enough.”

At least Højbjerg appears to know the gravity of the position Southampton are currently in, unlike his manager Mauricio Pellegrino who called relegation-threatened Saints’ prospects as a “nice challenge” in a post-match interview with the BBC on Saturday.