Mark Hughes still believes Saints can avoid relegation and insisted that the goalless draw at Leicester was a positive for his team.

Saints went into the game at the King Power Stadium on the back of four Premier League defeats on the bounce, with three goals conceded in all of them.

Confidence was on the floor but Leicester were also poor and looked to be there for the taking.

However, Saints couldn’t take advantage and could only muster a point when they so desperately needed a win.

Despite that Hughes still has faith.

He said: “I have been working with them for five weeks or whatever it is and there is real desire from the guys and they are sticking at it.

“On occasions they are found lacking but we are in a situation nobody anticipated.

“We just have to roll our sleeves up and get the job done.

“It’s not going to be easy. We have got difficult fixtures. We have had one home game against Chelsea and the rest have been away games and it’s difficult to win away games in the Premier League and everybody knows that.

“We are just going to have to be better in terms of asking more questions of the opposition.”

When asked whether the goalless draw was a point gained or two lost he added: “We don’t know yet, we will have to wait until the end of the season to see if that’s a significant point one way or the other.

“We haven’t been able to pick up points of any note in recent weeks so it’s a positive, and clearly we must take it as a positive.

“Performance wise I don’t think we got anywhere near the performance level we showed against Arsenal and Chelsea but we didn’t get any points out of those games and that’s where we find ourselves.

“I think defensively we were fine. Leicester have a lot of talent at the top end of the pitch, a lot of pace and athleticism and with the threat of Vardy that always puts the seed of doubt into your defender’s minds.

“There was a bit of apprehension throughout the side, which was understandable to an extent because it was important we took something out of the game, but we needed to get the balance right.

“Though we were fine defensively we needed to find that balance to create more of a threat at the top end of the pitch and we probably didn’t get that as good as we should have done.”