Mark Hughes defended his tactics in the goalless draw at Leicester.

With Saints needing wins in order to survive there were questions over whether he was too cautious towards the end of the goalless draw and if he should have risked defeat for the chance of victory.

Hughes explained that with his team’s confidence so fragile he had to maintain a balance, but also accepted from now on attack will have to be a priority.

He said: “We put on Redmond, we put on Charlie and freshened it up like for like because Shane Long had a huge effort against Chelsea and was clearly flagging when we took him off.

“It was about making sure we changed personnel but still kept the energy in the team.

“It was a little bit of a stick or twist situation to be fair and the importance of taking something out of the game shouldn’t be underestimated.

“Clearly we are going to get to a point with the games that we have that we are just going to have to throw everything at it.

“Maybe tonight wasn’t the case for it but for the games we have left that’s my mindset and we are going to have to get maximum points.”

He added: “Leicester were the home side and throwing on attacking players and we had to make sure that we had to be resolute and not lose the game and that’s what we were.

“Leicester will test you with the pace and the ability they have with the likes of Mahrez who can drop short, put in a quality ball and you lose the game.

“It’s difficult at the moment because you can throw everything at it and be a little bit more expansive and then you lose the game and there was a real danger of doing that tonight.

“We have got to get the balance right and there will be games coming up where we will just have to take more risks and that’s where we find ourselves unfortunately.”

Hughes also insisted he wasn’t simply trying to get men behind the ball in the closing stages of the game.

“Give the home side some credit, they were penning us back,” he reflected.

“It wasn’t a tactic to get everybody behind the ball and play for the draw, we were trying to get out.

“Leicester made a lot of attacking substitutions and their intention was to win the game so you’ve just got to stay in the game.

“If you concede at that point of the game then clearly the game’s gone.

“It wasn’t through the want of trying and we made some progress down the left hand side late on in the game just because we were able to get out but it was difficult to do that because Leicester had a lot of players stopping that happening.”