Saints must change their mentality and be prepared for a battle when they visit Leicester this Saturday, according to Nathaniel Clyne.

After suffering a 2-1 defeat at Sunderland last weekend, Ronald Koeman’s European chasers are now preparing for a trip to the King Power Stadium and another clash with a relegation-threatened team.

Clyne believes the Black Cats showed more hunger than they did during the encounter at the Stadium of Light, and he insists that cannot happen again if Saints are to guarantee themselves a Europa League place next season.

“Sunderland, they really battled, they’re battling, they’re at the bottom, and I guess they were more hungry for it I guess than we were, but we’ve got to change our mentality, because we need to try and secure a fifth or sixth spot to try and get into Europa, because nothing’s guaranteed finishing seventh,” said the right-back.

“We’re relying on Arsenal to beat Aston Villa [if we finish seventh], so we need to get some more points on the board.”

Having enjoyed such a fine season, for much of which they were even pushing for a Champions League spot, Clyne admits it would be enormously deflating if Saints finished the campaign without qualifying for Europe at all.

“Definitely, that would be very disappointing, going such a long way all season, so we’ll just try not to throw it away at the end,” he said.

After the experience of Sunderland, the 24-year-old added that Saints will know exactly what sort of a challenge they will face against the Foxes, who are a point outside the relegation zone.

“Yeah, especially after [Saturday],” he said.

“We need to take what we got out of [Saturday] and we’re going to know that Leicester’s going to come at us just the way Sunderland did and hopefully we’ll be more mentally prepared and more physically prepared and up for the battle.”

Clyne added: “We’ve just got to push ourselves back up and get ready and prepare ourselves for the next game.”