Geordan Murphy says raising confidence and belief within the Leicester Tigers squad will be key in the remaining weeks of the season.

A derby defeat to Northampton Saints left Tigers in 10th place in the Gallagher Premiership table after Round 17, while Worcester Warriors and Newcastle Falcons both won to close the gap at the bottom of the table.

As Saints celebrated a 29-15 at Welford Road on Friday – levelling derby honours in the league this season after Tigers had won at Twickenham back in October – head coach Murphy said: “We were second best in everything on the day. They played incredibly well.

“There are some system errors and silly individual errors. Some of that is the pressure we’re under – we’ve been under pressure for huge amounts of the season – and we look like a team struggling for confidence and belief.

“We need to drive it and get a bit more out of everyone.”

Tigers conceded three tries and were 29-3 down before George Ford and Tom Youngs scored late on in front of a 23,000-strong crowd.

"We were up for the game, we had a really good week, but we looked rattled at times and we didn’t turn our breaks into points,” added Murphy.

“We started with good intensity but then made a couple of mistakes which cost us territory and they scored a good breakaway try and we were pretty much chasing the game from there.

“I thought Saints were very good at slowing down ball in the right areas while we were inaccurate at the breakdown.

“We closed the first half strongly and looked a bit more potent. But we didn’t start firing shots in the second half until the final 10 minutes.”

League leaders Exeter Chiefs are the next visitors to Welford Road, on Saturday, April 6 (4.30pm).