Southampton boss Mark Hughes says his players weren't cynical enough for their 3-0 defeat at Liverpool.

Saints lost as an own goal by Wesley Hoedt was added to by Joel Matip and Mohamed Salah.

"When you come to places like this you've got to remain in the game and be resolute," said Hughes.

"You've got to understand that sometimes you just have to play the percentages, clear your lines and regroup, and, at times, certainly in the opening period, we had moments where we had good opportunities just to really pressure and stop momentum building and a couple of times we got the fundamentals of defending a little bit wrong.

"Clearly, when you do that against good quality, they have the capacity to hurt you, albeit we conceded with a ball that's just played into our six-yard box that's had a ricochet and Wes hasn't been able to sort his feet out and it goes in off his knee, so that's unfortunate, that's unlucky, but clearly there were other moments where we could have done better.

"Obviously, we conceded two goals from set plays. At corners, with the strength we've got I expect us to do better, but it's a good header for the second goal, you have to say that. At the moment we just need to make sure we're getting first contact when balls are coming in and we were guilty of not doing that enough."