Southampton manager Mark Hughes has acknowledged that his side "were poor" as they fell to a 3-0 defeat at West Ham United on Saturday.
The Welshman's first Premier League game in charge of the Saints yielded a heavy loss as Joao Mario opened the scoring and former Stoke City player Marko Arnautovic added a brace.
All three goals came in the first half of the game at the London Stadium, and Hughes was not pleased with how his charges gave themselves too much to do come the restart.
"We were poor," Hughes told BBC Sport. "The opening 10 minutes of any game is key, you have to manage it correctly and we damaged ourselves. We conceded poor goals and gave us too much to do.
"We have to find a way to score goals. If you can't get a foothold in the game by working hard and winning the right to play you are not going to create chances. That is the focus this week. We have to understand that we are in a situation of our own marking.
"We have to be better next time out. The games ahead are going to test us greatly, we have to be ready and we have to have answers. From my point of view [today] was a good learning experience. It's okay training well but you have to be able to translate that onto the pitch on a Saturday afternoon. Today we couldn't do that."
Southampton, who sit 18th in the table, have won just once in their last 18 league matches and five of their remaining seven games are against teams in the top half of the table.
Giuseppe Labellarte
