Nigel Adkins insists Saints will continue to be positive away from home despite back-to-back defeats.

The Saints boss has seen his side produce inconsistent results on the road all season, despite generally not playing much differently to how they have at St Mary's, where they can't stop winning.

It's a head scratcher for Adkins whose side have taken 12 points from ten games away from home, an average of 1.2 per fixture, as opposed to the incredible average of three when on home soil.

Analysis

Chief sports writer Adam Leitch evaluates Saints' performances away from St. Mary's and gives his thoughts on what Saints can do to improve on the road inside today's Daily Echo.

Saints have continued to execute their attacking style of play away from home but results have just not quite followed.

Adkins said: "It's something we've got to analyse.

"There's that attitude where we want to be positive.

"We created a lot of good situations (against Doncaster) where we've got set-plays and we were looking to dominate from them and we didn't do that and there were one or two factors involved in that.

"The opposition are not going to just roll over and you've got to remember that."We came to win the game, get on the front foot and we tried to get on and win it and one counter attacking goal has cost us the game."

He added: "It's good that you said that we're not playing badly because we are trying to dominate the games and we are trying to force the issue to go and win games.

"We have yet to see a team score a fantastic goal against us."

The recent defeats at Bristol City and Doncaster have been particularly surprising, coming as they have against teams battling for the drop.It might well get even harder.

Next up on the road is a local derby with Portsmouth while in 2012 Saints still have to go away to all the other top eight teams aside from Cardiff, who beat them in September.

"We know we need to improve our away form in respect of getting more wins," said Adkins.

"Maybe because we are trying to win games more quickly sometimes a draw is not a bad result but when you're top and they're bottom you're looking to win this game and we haven't done.

"We've got to take it on the chin and learn the lessons from it because we'll talk about it and debrief it.

"Fact of the matter is it's a poor goal we conceded due to a lapse of concentration but we have to build the players up ready for the next one.

"We are coming away to win."We know we've got to address our away form because if we're going to have the aspirations that we want to get promoted from this division this season we've got to win more games away from home.

"I'll reflect upon on it but perhaps in our desire to go and win the game the counter attack has cost us."