Mark Hughes believes there can still be a successful outcome to Saints’ survival fight after watching his team battle to a dramatic 3-2 defeat at Arsenal.

Hughes rung the changes, and played five at the back at the Emirates Stadium, and it so nearly did the trick.

In the end Saints ran out narrow losers in a game in which both teams ended with ten men, a result that keeps them third from bottom with six games to play.

However, Hughes was largely pleased by what he saw.

He said: “Pleased because I thought it was a good performance from our point of view in contrast to what we were able to produce against West Ham. I think there was a marked contrast in the level of what we produced then and what we produced today.

“I think we benefitted clearly from a good week’s work leading into the game which we weren’t able to have with the international week which fragmented our working week so it was difficult leading into that game.

“I think we came here with a game plan which for the most part worked.

“Clearly we were prepared to allow Arsenal a lot of possession in front of us but our intention was to counter quickly and release Shane Long in areas high up the field where we could get support to him.

“That worked well on a number of occasions, not least the goal, where we could have capitalised and scored one or two more.

“As it happens and has been the case this season it’s been our defensive work.

“We were a little bit poor on the first goal and I was disappointed in that one, they got a huge slice of luck with the second goal and we are going in at half time feeling hard done by in terms of being behind in a game we very much were working hard in.

“We had to dust ourselves down and come out with a real purpose in the second half and I thought we did that again.

“From my point of view the only criticism is when you get back on level terms and you’ve had the emotion of taking the lead and going behind and coming back against a good Arsenal side then at that point you need to have that clarity of thought in terms of making sure you take something out of the game.

“Maybe that’s the biggest criticism that given the efforts and what we produced we need to take something out of every game we play and unfortunately we haven’t been able to do that.

“In terms of the contrast to what we were able to produce against West Ham it was clearly more encouraging form my point of view in terms of what we need to do to get out of this situation.

“Clearly we have talented players and we just need that element of determination and ability to affect the opposition when the going gets tough.

“I saw evidence of that today and that’s encouraging.”