Danny Fox has called on Saints to show greater character and steel following their crushing defeat at Arsenal.

The left-back, who was gifted the visitors’ solitary strike in a 6-1 drubbing at the Emirates Stadium, admitted the loss, as well as the performance, was tough to take.

“Everyone’s down,” said Fox. “It’s just disappointing the manner we got beat. We just need to show a bit more steel and a bit more character, especially when you go two or three-nil down.

“But we have to look at the positives. Obviously, the gaffer will say that as well. But we need to start getting results – we’re four games in now and we’ve still got no points on the board.”

Fox conceded that there is always the prospect that Saints will struggle against the teams who inhabit the upper echelons of the division.

“We’re playing against top players and you get punished against these top teams,” he said. “All they need is one chance.”

Unfortunately for Saints, the stats showed that Arsenal created far more than just one opportunity – to be exact, it was 20.

Nigel Adkins ’ side were duly punished, even if some of the Arsenal strikes had a hint of good fortune about them.

“You look at the goals that we had against us today, two of them were own goals, one’s deflected off the post and gone back to one of their players,” said Fox. “It just didn’t seem to fall for us. But I think you make your own luck in this league as well.

“You can go on about getting punished and whatever as long as we want, but we should have seen the game out against Man United (two weeks ago), no matter who was on the pitch or what had happened.

“We need to show a bit more character and believe that we can play at this level. We are good enough to be here I think.”