Saints team captain Jose Fonte has told teenage ace Harrison Reed to be extremely proud of the performance he produced on his full Premier League debut.

The 19-year-old started his first top-flight match, helping Ronald Koeman’s men to a valuable 3-0 win over Everton, at St Mary’s.

Afterwards, he drew praise from Fonte for the way he handled himself.

The centre-half said: “I told him before the game, ‘Listen, you don’t have to prove anything to no one, we know how good you are. Finally, you have your chance, so just go out there, do what you normally do in training, and, above all, be aggressive.’ “That’s what I tried to tell him – be aggressive, be on the front foot, and the rest will come, and he was fantastic.

“He was competing, fighting for every ball. He won balls, he tried to play, he certainly didn’t look out of place, so I’m happy for him and he should be really proud.”

Given the context of this win – on the back of five defeats and missing a host of key players – there is certainly an argument to be made that this was Saints’ finest victory of the season.

Fonte agreed that it was a particularly satisfying success for the side.

“It’s massive, because, as you know, we were missing top players,” he said.

“We missed Wanyama, Morgan, Tadic – it’s three top players for us that have been doing very well for us.

“It was all about passion, I think. Passion, heart, desire to win, and to change things, and that’s what we focused on before the game.

“It’s all about running more than them and showing more desire to win, because, after that, the things will come naturally, and I think it was clear to see that we wanted it more than them, I think.

“We put tackles, we won tackles, we showed we were on the front foot.

“Yeah, they had more possession, because they are naturally a team that likes to have the ball.

“We played a different system (3-5-2) that we’re not used to, which made it difficult to sometimes go and press, but it was all about the win.”

Fonte was also delighted with the response to last week’s deflating Capital One Cup quarter-final defeat at League One side Sheffield United.

“Obviously, it won’t erase the memory of what we lost, because it was a great opportunity to be in the semi-finals, to try and win a cup, to try and win a medal,” he said.

“Obviously, we are still scarred. We’ll be scarred for the rest of the season, because we won’t forgive ourselves what happened that night, but we have to move on.

“We have the league and the FA Cup to focus on.”

Fonte added: “[The fans] didn’t deserve what happened last Tuesday and we talked about it.

“We wanted to give them something to be happy and to keep supporting us like they always do, and you saw it, they were always behind us and they believed in us, and I just want to say thank you to them, because they’ve been great to us and I hope they stick to us always.”