Saints have been urged to take more risks in the final third in a bid to find more goals.

The team are among the lowest scorers in the early Premier League table with six from six games heading into today’s trip to face Wolves at Molineux.

Danny Ings has three of those and Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg two with Ryan Bertrand the only other player to have contributed so far.

Saints boss Mark Hughes wants his side to gamble more in the final third and believes if they do they will find goals much easier to come by.

He said: “We want to have the threat of goals from all areas of the pitch if we can.

“We have actually created a quite high number of chances and our conversation rate isn’t as high as it needs to be.

“I saw one stat on shots on the opposition goal and we are quite high. It’s only the top four or five teams that have had more shots on target than ourselves so it shows we are getting in decent positions in good attacking spots on the field and maybe not creating the clear cut chances that lead to goals.

“We need to improve that and it comes from good forward play, intelligent play in midfield, clever creativity in the top end of the pitch where maybe we are not as adept as we need to be.

“We work on that and we talk about that and needing to take a few more risks.

“We have been guilty sometimes of being fearful of losing the ball in the final third when really that’s the time you should take risks and ask questions and be a little bit more creative than we have been.

“That’s something I am trying to encourage the team to do. That will come as a consequence.

“We are getting goals from the midfield. Pierre Hojbjerg has come up with a couple of goals from that central midfield area and that’s what we want to see.

“Clearly we want all our strikers when called upon to be a goal threat for us but we need to be a threat in wider areas and keep creating chances, and when we do we need to up our conversation rate as well.”

Saints face another tricky away day at Wolves, who have settled in quickly to life in the Premier League following their promotion from the Championship.

“I didn’t see a great deal of them in the Championship but in the Premier League you take more notice and they do impress you in how they approach the game,” said Hughes.

“They are very expansive and have a lot of depth. They can rotate the ball and in the key areas they are dangerous and have good quality and threat in wider areas.

“They are a good side, a side that understands what they are trying to do and how to affect the opposition in key areas of the field.

“We will have to be attentive and conscious there will be set moves and patterns they will try and replicate time and again.

“We have threats of our own we feel we can test them with.

“When you come into the Premier League everything is bright and shiny and people are enthused and they’ve had nothing really to dent their confidence, and that’s credit to them. It’s how we deal with that.”