JOSE Fonte has urged Ronald Koeman to go spending in the January transfer window or risk getting left in the wake of their Premier League rivals.

The captain confessed that Saints’ drop in form could be down to a lack of depth within the squad at St Mary’s and that they have to be realistic with the limitations of the current crop of players.

Fonte reckons that other Premier League sides have better quality options than Saints and wants Koeman and Les Reed, the club's executive director of football, to go into the market next month.

Saints haven’t won in four games and drew 1-1 with the league’s bottom team Aston Villa on Saturday.

The 31-year-old wants to see new additions come in as Saints try and get back on track and fulfil their European football aspirations.

“Obviously it’s hard for the team to get the right players in January but I’m sure they (the club) will be looking to add some quality,” he said.

“Any team in this league will try and look and try and add some quality for January. It’s always been like that.

“I don’t think it’s going to be any different with Ronald and the board.

“We’re going to try and get some more quality. It’s simple as that.”

Fonte fears that Saints will be left behind in the Premier League if they don’t act when the window swings open next month.

“If you don’t keep up you see very clearly that you start dropping. We need to keep up,” he said.

Koeman, who has admitted that he is content with the player options available to him, has said doing business in January is unlikely.

“I’m not disagreeing with the manager,” said Fonte. “Who am I to disagree with the manager?

“He has his opinion and we have to agree that if he’s confident of course, he has to feel confident in his players.

“But if you saw the Liverpool bench the other night with Benteke, Firmino – all these guys [on the bench].

“There’s £25m in players - that’s like £100m on the bench.

“What I’m saying is that, although we have quality, other teams have possible higher in that aspect on the bench for solutions to change the game.

“But we have trust in our players and we’re going to try and make it work with the quality that we have.

“You can’t be too optimistic that to think you’re going to win the league because it’s very difficult.

“Other teams have more potential than us.”

When asked why Saints’ form has taken a nose dive, Fonte said: “Maybe we don’t have the depth that other teams have. That’s a factor.

“We have to play with what we have and what we have is good. It’s good enough, but like I said if you’re hard to beat and start keeping clean-sheets, we give ourselves a great chance to win games.

“That’s what we’re going to try and do – be really hard to beat.”