Alan Pardew was pleased to see Saints climb off the bottom of the table as his side ran out 3-1 winners at Oldham.

A victory against an in form Latics side wasn't all plain sailing for the visitors, but it represented a milestone achieved.

"It's another hurdle cleared," he stated afterwards. "We had minus ten points, and I don't care what anyone says, it is a really tough psychological barrier. We've broken that and since we've broken it we've had three wins.

"We're very pleased about that and now the next target is to get out of the relegation zone.

"We're far from complete yet and still made errors in the game that I wouldn't want to see if we had a team striving for promotion so there's a lot to do.

"It was a great result," the Saints boss added. "Although the scoreline suggests we won comfortably, we did it in a strange way really.

"We could have wrapped the game up in the first half but we missed three or four good chances, hit the bar and then suddenly they got a goal and the game could have changed. We were strong enough to deal with that."

The recent form that the hosts had shown came through in the second half which made for a decent contest.

"We played well on a good surface and Rickie Lambert was unplayable at times.
In terms of the performance we were up against a team bang in form in Oldham who worked really hard," Pardew explained.

"If you were a neutral you would have thought Southampton were going to win it with a bit to spare, but suddenly you thought Oldham could get something.

"Their endeavour and their effort you could not fault - it was superb and really put us under a lot of pressure. They are one of the better teams we've played in terms of effort and work rate and that goes down to the work the manager has done here."

On the goal scoring front the manager was happy to accept some fortune for Rickie Lambert's strike, and paid tribute too to his new signing who scored on his debut.

"It was so pleasing for Connolly because if ever a player deserved a goal it's him. The work he's put in to rebuild his professional career is great. He took the booking for his celebration but it was something we could forgive him for.

"Those who saw the Chelsea game today know that goalkeeping errors happen, but you've got to hit the target for those errors to appear," he said of Lambert's effort.

"It was a good strike and obviously he should have saved it but it went in for us and that happens. We had other chances that perhaps we should have buried so we'll take the ones that come our way because we created enough to win by four or five to be honest."