Mark Wotte conceded his side were just not good enough defensively as they slipped to a demoralising 3-2 defeat against Charlton.

The Championship’s bottom club picked up only their seventh win of the season at St Mary’s to plunge Saints deeper into relegation trouble.

Saints pushed on late on and Wotte felt they deserved to get a draw from the game but in the end his side paid the price for their poor defending.

He said: “We didn’t play our best game of the season, especially in defensive aspects where we didn’t play as well as we did the past couple of months.

“The way they scored their first goal and third goal was not very well defended.

“The last two or three months we have built on a solid defence but we under performed defensively and that is influencing everything – if you concede goals like that of course the confidence goes down and you don’t play football like we should have played.

“We could have drawn this game 3-3 because we created some chances last ten minutes and also the header from Andrew Surman and a chance for Jason Euell and 3-3 would have been a fair result but we were not good enough to beat Charlton Athletic.”