JOSE Fonte insists that if Saints want to compete with the Premier League’s elite they must sort out some mentality issues.

Although pleased with the 2-0 victory over south coast neighbours AFC Bournemouth, the Saints captain couldn’t hide his discontent with a drab second-half performance.

Fonte withdrew himself from the game at half-time, with Saints 2-0 up through goals by Steven Davis and Graziano Pelle, because he didn’t want to risk getting injured after feeling stiff.

The 31-year-old, who was replaced by Maya Yoshida, watched as Ronald Koeman’s side switched off and allowed Cherries to dominate possession.

Fonte believes that if Saints want to compete in the top six of the Premier League, they cannot perform like that, despite extending their unbeaten run to seven games in all competitions against Eddie Howe’s team.

“This cannot happen again,” he stated. “That is why everyone in the dressing room was disappointed after you win 2-0 at home because if you want to compete with the top six, then you cannot allow yourself to have this second half.

“That is why I say it is a mentality issue. You have to be the full 95 minutes on the front foot, concentrating and kill the game.

“You cannot allow teams to get back in games and that is why some words were said in the dressing room of discontent.”

The skipper has pinpointed the issue.

“I think it is just our mentality switches,” he explained. “We need to understand that the game is 90 minutes not 45, so we need to do it for 90 minutes.

“It’s just a question of being ruthless and that’s it. Just never take the foot off the accelerator.”

He added: “Obviously we were really happy after the first-half, but in the second-half I think we just dropped too much of the intensity and we couldn’t hold the ball,” he said.

“We stopped making runs, stopped creating the space for us to allow us to play and, in all fairness, Bournemouth started pressing high to play as well.

“But still, we need to do better in this kind of situations because it’s not the first now, because again against Leicester as well we lacked a little bit of intensity in the second-half.”

Fonte took himself off at half-time after feeling the battle wounds of the past few games.

“I’ve had two dead legs in the last couple of weeks and, after the Liverpool game, I was feeling a little bit stiff,” he said.

“But I felt good during the last two/three sessions. I trained as normal, but then today towards the end of the first half I started to feel a little but stiff and one occasion, on the long pass, I started feeling a bit stiff.

“I made the decision that there’s no point in risking pulling something because the league is long and we have many games, so I took the decision of coming off and not risking a bad injury.”