Southampton manager Nathan Jones was left "surprised" after being being booed by the home crowd after his side lost 1-0 to Nottingham Forest on Wednesday night.
The Reds took the lead through Taiwo Awoniyi in the 27th minute of the game and managed to hold on for their first win on the road all season. The result lifts Steve Cooper's team out of the bottom three while the Saints remain rooted to the foot of the Premier League table.
The St. Mary's crowd rained down boos and jeers on the Southampton team after losing for the sixth consecutive time in the league. Jones, who is yet to pick up a point since replacing Ralph Hasenhuttl in the dugout, responded to the jeers after the final whistle.
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“It surprises me but it's their prerogative,” Jones told HampshireLive. “Especially where I've come from, I can understand why they're sceptical.
"You have to show real characteristics when you come through this. I'm from the Welsh mining community. Everything I've done in my life is a challenge. I've never gone into a place like I left at Luton where everything is on a high and on the up.
"The team has kept one clean sheet and that was Bournemouth away. And with the greatest respect, they were very fortunate to keep a clean sheet then. (Forest) didn't have any big chance apart from the goal they scored."
Jones claimed that Southampton had the better chances than Forest and should have gotten something from the game. "I was really disappointed," he admitted. "We wanted to start the game on the front foot, we wanted to be on the front foot and be aggressive.
"I thought we started well and we had a glorious opportunity to take the lead but we didn't take it. That put us on the back foot a little bit and then we gifted them a goal which has happened far too often this season.
"Once you do that then it allows the other team to sit in and defend and deny space and we didn't show enough quality in the final third to open them up. We had enough situations, enough set-pieces and enough opportunities to carve something but we didn't show enough quality."
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