Brendan Rodgers has described his Leicester City as a work in progress after Southampton gained revenge for their 9-0 thrashing earlier in the season with a 2-1 victory at the King Power on Saturday.

The defeat was only Leicester’s fifth in the league this season, having at one stage looked like being the most likely challengers to runaway leaders Liverpool. But rather than dwell on a strangely under-par performance, their manager insisted the experience of losing to Danny Ings’s late goal would benefit his players in the long run.

“You’re going to have days like that – we’re not at the level of Liverpool or Manchester City,” said Rodgers. “This group has been amazing in my time here but we still have a lot of development to make. This was a really good learning experience for us. It’s not a nice feeling to lose but we haven’t had it so much and hopefully it will help us going forward.”

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Manchester United’s victory over Norwich means Leicester are now 11 points clear of fifth place in the race for Champions League qualification. Rodgers acknowledged that his side still have plenty of work to do to achieve that goal and has banned any mention of reaching Europe’s elite club competition for now.

“With experience as a manager you find perspective much better, so there’s a long way to go,” he said. “I’ve said I don’t want anyone talking about us being in the Champions League and European places. Go back to the beginning of the season, we were one of the teams, with West Ham and Everton and Wolves, who had the possibility of finding a European place, and for us that hasn’t changed.

“The boys have been brilliant up until now and they’ll continue to work because they’re so honest, such an honest group. So we’ll take it on the chin, take our medicine, go away and analyse where we can be better. [We] made a lot of mistakes in the game [against Southampton], with and without the ball, so we will go away and look at where we are better and take that into next week’s game.”