Mauricio Pellegrino has urged his Saints side to turn their St Mary’s anxiety into a positive when they face West Brom tonight.

Midfielder Dusan Tadic this week admitted the squad are feeling some nerves when playing in front of their home fans, which is hardly surprising given Saints have collected just two victories on their own turf since the end of January.

However, Saints know they need to get over it and quickly as they find themselves in an important run of fixtures.

Pellegrino wants his team to keep the anxiety, but to channel it in an effective way.

He said: “It’s a fact that we are not getting really good results (at home), not just in this season but from last season, and some who have more time here than me in the past can feel this anxiety. It is something that is normal.

“At the top level it is up and down all the time, and every single game, and you have to challenge in these types of moment.

“Dusan is a guy with experience and when you explain this it’s because you want to challenge it.

“Anxiety has a relationship with excitement and that’s because you want to do it right.

“Anxiety is something positive when you want to do your best performance. It would be worse to feel nothing.”

He added: “I think the fans always receive the message from the team on the pitch.

“Sometimes we use football to try to be happy and every single weekend we can’t sometimes because we fight for the other.

“In society we need to be stimulated all the time to be excited and happy and sometimes the movie is not good enough.

“We want to play well, we want to score goals, but it is part of our job.

“We have to understand the people and show we want to win and the crowd will be behind us.”

Pellegrino admitted he and the players can sense the mood of the crowd during a game, but insists it is up to the team to set the tempo.

“During the game always I receive the feeling from my players,” he said.

“Sometimes we hear when the crowd support us or when they are complaining about something. It is part of our job.

“I would like to make happy the people every single week because the people pay their ticket to be happy, to stimulate, to finish the weekend in the best way, but sometimes we can’t do it because we are competing and the top level is really tough in the Premier League.

“Every single Premier League game you have to fight for every single point.

“I think the people sometimes are happy with the attitude of the team.

“For example, against Man U the crowd were supporting the team until the end and when the game finished all of them were really grateful with us and this is really good.

“Hopefully we can give them a victory and we can covert this start, this number, in points.”