Hull City continued their play-off push with a win at Southampton, who are now without a victory in their past seven league matches.

The visitors were gifted the lead when Oli McBurnie intercepted Ryan Manning's loose back-pass and teed up Kyle Joseph to lash home before a Charlie Hughes header from a corner made it 2-0 at the break.

The Saints pulled a goal back with 20 minutes to go when sub Ross Stewart poked in Leo Scienza's cross at the back post.

Southampton pressed in search of an equaliser but it never really looked likely they would find one and they slipped to a first home reverse since 1 November.

Sergej Jakirovic's men are up to fifth in the table after a fifth win in their past seven league games.

Another defeat leaves Southampton winless in the Championship since 9 December and 11 points off the play-off places.

Both teams had lost their most recent league outing, although a postponement of their home clash with Watford meant this was Hull's first Championship match since 1 January.

It was the home side who had the better of the opening exchanges, with Ivor Pandur forced into a good save by Adam Armstrong and Finn Azaz sending a shot into the side-netting.

However, their early momentum was killed when Manning's pass back to debutant Saints keeper Daniel Peretz was intercepted by McBurnie and he kept his composure to lay off for Joseph to score with conviction.

In the build up to the game Southampton boss Tonda Eckert had said his side had been working on their defensive shape at set plays so he will have been exasperated when Hughes headed in unchallenged at the back post from Amir Hadziahmetovic's deep corner.

The hosts had almost two thirds of the possession and 22 shots compared to eight from the visitors but Stewart's first goal since returning from three months out injured earlier in January was all they had to show for it.

The result is Hull City's first league double over Southampton since the 1950-51 campaign.

Saints welcome Sheffield United on Wednesday as the look to get their flagging season back on track, while Hull visit fellow play-off hopefuls Preston on Tuesday.

Southampton boss Tonda Eckert told BBC Radio Solent:

If we look at the stats the game has a very clear direction but the result is a different one. We need to get our heads up and put our chests out.

There were two moments in the first half where we gave very easy goals away.

For me the job is to create chances and we had more than enough to have won the game today.

We need to start winning football games. We have a chance to do this on Wednesday and we'll invest everything to do that.

I have all of the faith that there is that we will show a reaction. I live and breathe for this football club and I do everything 24/7 to bring it back on the road and that will continue.

Hull City boss Sergej Jakirovic told BBC Radio Humberside:

We are very happy because of the three points. It was a difficult and demanding game.

We took our chances and scored two very nice goals.

I think we mostly controlled the second half. Of course when you conceded this will push the opposition to take more risks and be more dangerous but at the end we took the points and I'm very satisfied with that.

"We knew that Southampton are second in the league for possession so you know you will not have the ball. We prepared the game for what we would do out of possession and what we would do when we got the ball, we must be very quick, vertical and direct.