Eljero Elia admitted Saints were punished for another sluggish start after the 2-0 defeat at Leicester.

Ronald Koeman’s side lost a fourth away match in succession and, in truth, were never really in the contest after conceding two avoidable goals in the opening 19 minutes.

“If you don’t start good, the first ten, 20 minutes, and then the whole game we have control for the game,” said Elia.

“Ok, sometimes they come out, but we control the game more, but then you know it is hard to score, because they stand with 11 men behind the ball. You know it is really hard if you don’t start the game good.

“We know it in the game before, the game before that and it happened again.”

Saints fans will be asking why is that?

“I don’t know,” admitted Elia. “The first thing, we are not like going 100 per cent in the duels and then we lose the duels first 20 minutes, and after that we won the duels and we make the game, but we cannot create 100 per cent chances – only shoot from distance – and we cannot [get] through to be dangerous in front of them.”

While it may be a source of frustration for Saints not to have taken advantage of Tottenham’s similarly poor run in recent weeks, they can at least take heart that they have not lost any ground on them, remaining one point and one place behind Mauricio Pochettino’s side, who occupy the last guaranteed Europa League spot in sixth position.

“It is in our head, we want to finish that, that we go to the Europa,” said Elia.

“We dream about it, but we still have to play good games and the past few weeks we don’t play good football.”

The winger is adamant that the players must change that when they host Aston Villa next Saturday.

“The whole season we play a good season, so we have to finish it good at home and then Manchester City (on the last day) everything can happen,” he said.