FRANNY Benali has urged Saints to keep the faith as they aim to avoid a sixth straight defeat tomorrow against Everton.

Benali was in the last Saints side to avoid six successive defeats, at the beginning of the 1998-99 season.

Dave Jones’s team had to wait until their 12th match for the first win of a campaign that ended with their dramatic Great Escape at Selhurst Park.

Benali believes Ronald Koeman’s side can arrest their recent decline against Everton – but insists they have to believe it too.

He said: “The players have to stick together. Their confidence isn’t what it once was but they have to keep that belief in themselves to get a result and turn things around.

“This should just be a little blip, the sort that comes along at some point in every season.

“But I wouldn’t have predicted they’d lose five in a row.”

Saints’ malaise began with home defeats against Manchester City and Manchester United either side of an unfortunate loss at Arsenal.

Two more defeats follwed in the space of four days, at Burnley in the league and the shambolic Capital One quarter-final defeat at Sheffield United.

“On paper, they would have expected to pick up at least a point from Burnley and losing to Sheffield United was a missed opportunity to progress,” continued Benali.

“They had an excellent chance of getting to the final which makes it that much more disappointing.

“Before that, the performances hadn’t been too bad on the whole. We created plenty of chances against Manchester United but went away with no points.

“That can’t have helped confidence and injuries and suspensions have come along at the same time, as tends to happen. “Until now, most of the players have been putting in 8/9 out of ten performances and when that’s the case you can get away with a couple not being at their best. But it’s probably a case now of three or four players being below par and that’s too many.”

Saints may be paying the price for taking the Capital One Cup more seriously than they took last season’s FA Cup.

But, like most Saints fans, Benali would not have it any other way.

“I liked seeing that from Ronald, it was a signal of intent and was still the right thing to do,” he said.

“It just makes it that much more disappointing when you go out after seeing a path to Wembley opening up.”