Mark Hughes: 'Players should enjoy challenge of relegation battle'

Southampton boss Mark Hughes has told his players to "enjoy the challenge" of being in a relegation battle.

The Saints are currently 18th in the Premier League table, five points from the safety of 17th position ahead of their clash with Leicester City at the King Power Stadium on Thursday night.

The south coast club have lost 3-2 to Arsenal and Chelsea in their last two Premier League matches, and are without a league victory since the start of February, but Hughes has insisted that his team can still escape the bottom three.

"I think the message is to enjoy the challenge. It's not an easy situation but don't be cowered by it, get out there and show people what you're about," Hughes told reporters.

"You have the opportunity to make a statement every time you play, every time you put the shirt on. There's a lot of talk about fear of failure - my interpretation of that is that you shouldn't allow people an opportunity to criticise you and you've got to use that motivation to drive you onto bigger and better things.

"I think we've allowed ourselves to be open to criticism because of the way the season has gone but we can turn that around and make a statement in these games that we have remaining, and that's our intention."

Southampton will take on Leicester, Bournemouth, Everton, Swansea City and Manchester City in their final five Premier League matches of the 2017-18 campaign.