Tonda Eckert has his eyes set on return to Premier League for Southampton

Southampton’s new permanent manager Tonda Eckert has his eyes on the Premier League after beating Birmingham 3-1 at St Mary’s.

Eckert was promoted from Under-21 boss to Will Still’s full-time replacement on Friday night after winning four of five games as caretaker.

Finn Azaz’s sixth goal in five matches and an Adam Armstrong double provided the champagne of his new contract to put Saints three points shy of the play-off places.

And Eckert has one goal in mind, an immediate return to the top flight. Eckert said: “I think Southampton belongs to the Premier League.

“We need to be ambitious as a football club. We shouldn’t shy away from saying that publicly.

“We know we are still quite far away but that doesn’t mean that we can’t talk about the ambition. We just have to back that up every single day.

“I knew I wanted to do everything for this club since the first day, whatever the role. The responsibility has grown now a bit. I feel well prepared and will put the club where it belongs.

“I decided to come for the project to develop players and my intentions haven’t changed [now I’m manager].”

He added: “I’m very pleased. We played against a good side today. I told the boys not to underestimate the win today.”

Azaz continued his scoring form with an excellent low left-footed shot into the corner of the goal, before Armstrong added his fourth and fifth goals in five games.

His first was an excellent arrowed strike from range before tapping in after Leo Scienza’s shot had been saved.

Attackers Azaz, Armstrong, Scienza and Tom Fellows have been scintillating since Eckert’s arrival, and the German explained why: “We prepare them to see where certain spaces might be opening up.

“I think we have been very good at finding big spaces in recent matches. They are things we present during the week and come to life on a matchday.”

Birmingham had 22 shots but only four of them were on target – including Demarai Gray’s curling goal to pull the score back to 2-1.

Blues boss Chris Davies said:  “We had more of the ball, more territory, more touches and more shots but we haven’t managed to defend well in decisive moments and gave ourselves too much to do.

“It was always going to be a challenge but the first 20 minute we weren’t strong enough physically or quick enough onto the ball and we paid the price for it as we were 2-0 down against a team with loads of good players away from home.

“That first 20 minutes is now what we have been talking about or what we wanted to deliver.

“They had a couple of moments that we have to defend better. We had a lot of Blues shirts back on all the goals, it wasn’t like we were opened up.

“After that there was a game of a lot of positives. We really took the game to them, there were a lot of things to like about our performance.

“The absolutely decisive goal is the 3-1. It takes the stuffing out of us when we had a really great chance to win.

“We went to the very end but it wasn’t enough.”