Adam Armstrong says Southampton didn’t react well enough to set-backs against Sunderland on Saturday.

All of Saints’ well-made plans were laid to waste at the Stadium of Light after the Black Cats raced into a 2-0 lead inside seven minutes, with the visitors unable to ever really get into the game as things kept getting worse.

Pierre Ekwah made it 3-0 on the stroke of half-time before Bradley Dack and Chris Rigg scored at the start and end of the second period to inflict a 5-0 defeat on Saints.

“The biggest thing is how you react and I don’t think we reacted good enough today,” said Armstrong, who wore the captain’s armband in the absence of Jack Stephens.

“That’s not us out there. You’ve seen in previous games the effort we put in every week and today we weren’t on it.

“Teams can punish you in this league. I’ve seen it myself, if you come to places like this and you’re not on it you can get turned over. It’s something we need to reflect on now.”

Southampton now have two weeks before they’re next in Championship action when they host Leicester City at St Mary’s on Friday September 15 after the international break.

Russell Martin will see a large crop of his squad head off on international duty, with at least six of the players that started against Sunderland likely to be called up for their countries.

It means there’ll be a delay in when Martin will be able to get his players together to process the defeat and get themselves ready for a huge clash against the Foxes.

“We’ve got a lot of lads going away on internationals, we’ve said out there when everyone gets back we need to work harder and work better and look forward to the Leicester game,” Armstrong added.

“Before this game we’ve had a really good start. It’s still a good start, we know today wasn’t good enough. I feel for the fans who have come all this way and we haven’t put in a performance.

“We all understand we need to be a lot better in games like this. We need to be on it every game. It’s a tough league. Like I say, we need to put that right in the next game and get back to it.”