Southampton boss ready to put Gary O'Neil friendship to one side

Former Scotland defender Martin, 38, played alongside O’Neil for Norwich, helping the Canaries win promotion to the top flight with victory in the 2015 Championship play-off final at Wembley.

The pair have remained in contact as their careers moved on into coaching, with Martin having started out at MK Dons and then Swansea before leaving to join the Saints, and O’Neil, 41, given his opportunity at Bournemouth ahead of taking on the Wolves hotseat last summer.

Martin believes they share plenty of football philosophies but that friendship will be on hold as both men target all three points, with Wolves yet to register a league win and bottom of the table.

“I had a lot of time for him as a team-mate and as a person. I think he has done a great job,” Martin said.

“He had an opportunity at Bournemouth and took it, as a young English coach, and did a brilliant job and now he has got a brilliant opportunity at Wolves.

“I have got no doubt at some point they will hit their stride this season because they have been really unfortunate and had a really tough run of fixtures as well, so we understand the challenge.

“I look forward to catching up with Gaz after, but we will compete against each other for 90 minutes, so a lot of that friendship stuff goes out the window for then.”

Martin added at a press conference: “We were probably two of the moaniest players you would come across in training with an opinion on the game, so it doesn’t surprise me that we have both got into this side of it.

“We spent most of the time arguing on the pitch – I wanted him to go away and get the ball higher up and he wanted to take the ball off my feet.

“But we got on really well and we used to have a lot of conversations around football, discussing it and disagreeing, that was a fun bit – arguing in the gym, on the training pitch and afterwards.

“We have all got a different idea of the game but I think we will have clarity in what we want.

“Part of that comes from those conversations when you are on the training ground, when you are playing and travelling or in hotels – I just used to feel for (former Norwich defender) Steven Whittaker, who would sit there and roll his eyes at all of us.”

Despite having finally put a league win on the board, Martin insists it has been business as usual at Staplewood this week.

“It relaxes people a little bit, but they worked extremely hard so the intensive training hasn’t changed,” he said.

“They have been together, really trusted in us and each other and what we are doing, bought into it and believed in it, otherwise we just wouldn’t have got through that period.”