The Saints were humbled 4-0 at home to the Italian outfit, but their manager was pleased with workout for his side and felt the game was a highly entertaining spectacle
Southampton manager Nigel Adkins remained upbeat despite his side's 4-0 pre-season defeat at home to Udinese.A double from Antonio Di Natale added to goals from Willians and Luis Muriel to hand the Italian side a comfortable win at St Mary's.
But in spite of the result, Adkins was in a positive mood and felt that his players would benefit from the experience.
"We didn't want to be on the wrong end of a 4-0 scoreline, but I don't think it was a 4-0 game, because I thought it was cracking," he told the club's official website.
"We will probably play two or three teams this season who are going to be at that quality so it was a great learning experience for us.
"Pre-season is about working on things and that is what we have done. We have taken a lot from this game, which is positive."
Striker Rickie Lambert echoed the words of his manager, saying that it was better to suffer this kind of defeat in pre-season than in a competitive fixture.
"I think you learn more from having a game like that than if we'd won 4-0," he said. "That would have obviously been good for confidence, but it's good to get something like that out of the way now rather than next week.
"We're definitely going to learn and we'll be watching how the game went. The result was disappointing but, I must say, there were some great finishes by their players."
