Mauricio Pellegrino says he will remain “demanding” of his players and believes they are capable of much more, despite improved recent performances.

Saints played superbly as they drew 1-1 with Arsenal last time out, having also starred at Manchester City as well as hammering Everton and fighting out a competitive match with Bournemouth in recent weeks.

The upturn in both displays and results have been a welcome tonic for Pellegrino and his team, but the manager feels the squad is still some way from hitting what he believes to be their full potential.

He said: “I don’t have an ideal because my idea is to play in one way that I would like to sustain the attack but I think we have the quality of player to try to play in the opponent’s half and try to be competitive against the strongest sides in the Premier League.

“We can be more competitive little by little and feel this experience.

“I think that I don’t want to put any limit because as a group of people we are working together and our gap to improve is huge.

“I don’t want to be happy with this. I think we can do, we should do, something more.

“I expect something more from them and I will be demanding with them because I want to achieve more, I want to win more games and I think we are really close to do this step.”

Next up for Saints is the visit of Leicester to St Mary’s tomorrow, and the return of former manager Claude Puel.

In terms of how he goes about trying to continually improve his players, Pellegrino likens their journey to a student studying at university.

“The main things is the way you come every day to the training ground and the mentality for training. This is the most important thing,” he reflected.

“When you go to university you have got a sense why you are studying and this is more or less the same.

“You come here with the real goal, the real strive, to be a better player every single day.

“This synergy at the end is better for the team.”

Pellegrino insisted that he hasn’t found a particular problem with Saints, and instead thinks it is something that all footballers should do.

“I think everybody can improve his mentality,” said Pellegrino.

“Everybody can improve and can learn in the way that you have to train, the way you can be better on and off the pitch, how you can approach the difficult moment, how you can be persistent when you are outside and living this situation.

“Sometimes obviously my goal as a manager is to try to improve them and teach them in how they have to train because sometimes we are trainers, but another thing is to teach them.

“I would like to be in the middle with balance. If you don’t have the right mentality it will be really difficult to move forward.”