I’m a believer! Wagner won’t change tactics

That’s despite having netted just 10 goals in 17 league games this term – the worst return in the top flight and Football League.

Asked if he still had belief Town could maintain performance levels when the goals just aren’t coming, Wagner was unequivocal.

“We have to be clear it’s not easy when you have conceded four defeats in a row by one goal.

“It hurts,” said the boss, who has striker Steve Mounie available after a three-match ban. “You always think what you can change and what you have to change, but when you really go in the detail then the most important thing is you have to convert your opportunities which you’ve created and your performances, which are on a very high level, into goals.

“We shouldn’t change our mindset, we shouldn’t change our formation, we shouldn’t change our intensity and we shouldn’t change how we set up for games.

“Everything the players have done performance wise is far too good to overthink these things.

“You have to continue, even if it is difficult when four defeats don’t help.

“You have to believe in what you are doing, but at the end you have to put the ball into the back of the net.

“This is what we haven’t done so far, but we will keep going with what we believe.”

While Town are battling without injured quartet Aaron Mooy, Danny Williams, Tommy Smith and Abdelhamid Sabiri as they tackle Southampton ahead of Christmas and the January transfer window, Wagner’s faith in the club remains undulled.

“The identity which the football club has built in the last threeand-a-half years is bigger than everything,” he said. “This football club should never change its identity.

“Sometimes results will maybe not be there, and over a longer period, like we have now, but if performances are as strong as they are now and everybody sticks to this identity, it makes no sense to go backwards or in another direction.

“The first time you start to panic and not be convinced about what you are doing then it’s difficult.

“But we are totally convinced about what we are doing.

“We see more or less every week we are on the right path, but we see also we have to develop and improve - especially in front of goal.

“And I don’t mean only our strikers.”

We shouldn’t change

our mindset, we shouldn’t change our

formation