BIRTHDAY boy Steve Davis is confident he can celebrate his highest Premier League finish with Saints in 2014.

The Northern Ireland midfielder is hoping to celebrate his 29th birthday today with a repeat of last season’s win against Chelsea, the team he expects to win the title.

After a run of one win from eight games, he admits it is time to turn encouraging performances into positive results again.

“Three points would be the best present I could get,” said Davis, who believes Saints have much to look forward to in 2014.

Despite recent results, he reckons Saints will better the tenth place he achieved in his first Premier League season with Aston Villa in 2004/05.

That was the season which saw Davis score his first Villa goal in the game at St Mary’s when Saints let slip a 2-0 lead to lose 3-2.

“We’re not happy with ninth at this point in time,” he said.

“At the start of the season we would have been relatively happy with this position.

“A lot of progression has been made, but we’re capable of better.

“We’re looking forward to the second half of the season, hopefully putting a difficult month behind us and finishing the season strongly.

“We just want to try and do the best we can. Our general play has been good and we just have to cut out our errors at the back and be more clinical going forward.

“We’ve been a little unfortunate and a bit naïve in certain games. The big frustration in the games against Villa, Spurs and Everton, was that we conceded so quickly after getting back in the game.

“We’ll look to eradicate that, that’s something we have to learn from and put right.

“I don't think there is any feeling within the team that we're on a slippery slope or anything like that.

“We have been in games, overall our general play has been good and we just have to cut out certain errors at the back and be a bit more clinical going forward as a team as well.

“I don't think it has dented our confidence in anyway.

“There is still that belief in terms of how we want to play and everybody is 100 per cent behind the methods.

“That is something we need to learn from and try to put right.

“As a whole, there are a lot of positives to take forwards and a good progression being made.”

A win against Chelsea would certainly help make up for the frustrations of the last few weeks.

“We’ve shown we’re capable of competing against the top, top teams and it’s a game we’re looking forward to, especially being at home,” continued Davis.

“We managed to beat them towards the end of the season when we beat some of the bigger teams at home.

“It is something we hope to replicate again.

“We know how strong Chelsea are, even though they don't seem to be firing on all cylinders yet.

“We see where they are in the table and they seem to have that mentality within them and an efficiency in their game. That is something we need to try and get into ours as well.

“It is a really good game to look forward to for us and one we will go into with belief of winning.”