Mauricio Pellegrino reflected on the tough job Premier League managers face as his predecessor Claude Puel tonight returns to St Mary’s for the first time since his sacking.

Puel was dismissed at the end of last season despite leading Saints to an eighth placed finish and the EFL Cup final.

Pellegrino was the ultimate beneficiary as he came in as a replacement, while Puel wasn’t long without a job with Leicester making a surprise appointment after axing Craig Shakespeare.

The Frenchman brings the Foxes to St Mary’s tonight with Pellegrino unwilling to predict the reaction of an entire stadium to their former boss, but admitting life as a manager can be hard.

He said: “In football everybody has got different opinions.

“Some people are more happy with some people, some players, some managers.

“Some people like a different style of football.

“Today in football when you don’t win it’s an emotional game. You in trouble. When you lose the people don’t want to hear an excuse. We need a result.

“When you don’t win you have to try and win again because you need to.

“Let me know which manager is admired by their fans when you lose and when you are in trouble? Nobody. Even the most important managers in the world.

“It is part of our life. It is part of our job. Everybody in this world knows what happens and we have to be really professional because the Premier League is really tough and equalised, and tough between a lot of teams.

“We have to be careful to talk about the fans. How many? 30,000, 40, ten, one? I don’t know. “It’s difficult to talk about that.”

He added: “How can I guess the reaction of 30,000 people? It’s impossible to know.

“When we talk about people we have to be careful because who are people? Ten, 20, 100, one, 30,000. Anybody know how 30,000 think?

“It’s impossible to put into all of them the same views.

“Around this table everybody has different opinions and we are five or six. Imagine 30,000. It’s impossible to know about that.”

It could also be a tricky evening for the Saints players, most of whom played under Puel.

“For me in this moment the life for our football players is not too easy,” insisted Pellegrino.

“The people outside think the life is really easy for them.

“Everybody thinks about success, about money, about they are the best in their families, in his context, but nobody knows what happens behind him and what they are doing in the past to be in this position, how they have been working, suffering, leaving things outside to be a top player.

“To be a top player today they have a lot of pressure. They have huge interests around them and it is not easy to manage.

“I would like to be close to them to try to realise at least to be more open minded in our life.”