RALPH Hasenhuttl said Saints “must always have the eyes open” when asked whether the club would look to sign a striker this summer.

The St Mary’s outfit squandered a number of clear opportunities in a 2-0 defeat to Liverpool on Saturday.

Che Adams and Nathan Tella saw good chances go begging, as the visitors slumped to a 17th league loss of the campaign.

Saints have netted on just two occasions in their past four league contests, one of which came from the penalty spot.

Asked whether the club would recruit a frontman, Hasenhuttl replied: “We must have a look what we do in the summer.

“When we have the feeling that we can get something or someone in this position, definitely, we must always have the eyes open – definitely.

“In general, our goalscoring is not so bad this season. We have more problems in conceding goals to be honest, although we didn’t give so many chances away on Saturday.

“We had 10 or 15 minutes in the first half where we haven’t been aggressive enough around the box and it’s easy to score against us in such a moment.

“We must learn then defending deeper sometimes. In some games we did it quite well.

“But this day was not so perfect, especially in the first half.”

Saints were still without striker Danny Ings against Liverpool at the weekend.

The England international was unable to feature against his former club due to a hamstring problem.

Quizzed on whether he felt Ings could have put away chances for Saints on Merseyside, the Austrian boss replied: “Who knows? I don’t know.

“In general, when you create so many chances as we had, then you must take something and this is the key.

“We bring the guys in the position they have to come in and then they have the opportunities to take. We wanted to be cool, we wanted to be brave and I think we had been from box-to-box.

“But then in the box not anymore. This is something of quality in the right moment – be calm.

“Everything was there to score but we didn’t.”