CAPTAIN Steven Davis has urged Saints to be proud of their performance in the League Cup final defeat to Manchester United at Wembley.

After suffering the injustice of a disallowed goal that should have stood and going 2-0 down, Saints battled back through a Manolo Gabbiadini brace to equalise.

The Italian striker had hit home from close range on 11 minutes, but it was chalked off after Ryan Bertrand was adjudged to be inferring with play and therefore offside.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Jesse Lingard then gave United a two-goal advantage before Saints staged a stirring comeback.

Yet, with Saints in the ascendancy, Ibrahimovic struck late to break Saints hearts.

“Everyone’s feeling down, but we can feel proud of the spirit and character we’ve shown, especially after going 2-0 down,” he said.

“When we got ourselves back in the game, we thought we might go on and win in it.

“United were clinical and that’s hard. It will take a couple of days to mull it over.

“We wanted to come here and win.”

Skipper Davis admitted Saints were unsurprisingly feeling very down after missing the opportunity to win a first major trophy in 41 years.

“It’s obviously a quiet dressing room in there as you’d expect,” he said. “It’s a difficult one to take because we deserved a lot more.

“We showed great character to get back in the game, but luck wasn’t on our side today – the disallowed goal that would have put us in front and then the second half we hit the post and De Gea had a couple of good saves.

“United were clinical and you can’t really enjoy a final unless you win it, so it’s a quiet dressing room.”

Saints were certainly the better team, dominating United for long periods.

“It’s no conciliation at the minute to be honest, but if we play like that between now and the end of the season we’ll certainly win more games,” Davis added.

“We deserved more today, but fair play to United.”

Davis gave his opinion on Gabbiadini’s disallowed goal.

“Whenever you’re in a final it can make all the difference if you make a good start and it was a massive point in the game. If we’d got ourselves in front it might of taken us onto win,” he said.

“But the unfortunately the decision didn’t go for us. We didn’t get the rub of the green today.”

He continued: “Some decision you get and some you don’t, but in a major final you want those decisions to go for you, especially when you’re playing against a team like Manchester United.

“The first goal is always important and it would have been massive had we got that.”

Davis hailed the 32,000 travelling fans.

“They were great. They were right behind us and they got behind us to get back into the game. It’s just disappointing we couldn’t send them home with a winners’ medal.”