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Wasps’ director of rugby Dai Young was a very disappointed man after his club’s defeat to Sale, and called for immediate improvement in a number of areas.

The hosts adapted better to the conditions, and Young said his team’s skill levels and ball retention left plenty to be desired.

“We made far too many errors,” the former Wales prop said. “The conditions dictated it was always going to be a tight game with few scoring opportunities, but from our point of view I am really disappointed with our skill levels.

“We made it hard for ourselves with something like 18 handling errors, I thought they were a bit more urgent than us and seemed to come up with all the 50-50’s on the floor.

“Most of the kicking battles today we lost, and the hugely disappointing thing was that we lost every aerial battle.

“This is becoming something of a theme, teams are identifying it as something of an achilles heel, and are getting a lot of joy from putting the ball in the air against us.

“It’s not a case that we’re not working on it, as we have already identified it, but we need to be better.

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“We should have scored in the first half, and created a couple of chances we didn’t take in the second half, so it could have been a different story if we had nailed them.

“Ball retention is the biggest work-on for us, as we’re not giving ourselves a chance to play.”

“We had a couple of opportunities in the first half, which we should have taken, and that would have given us something of a cushion, and when we had opportunities after that we just kept spilling the ball.

“We have gone away with a losing bonus point and that is as much as we deserved.”

Wasps have now slipped to ninth place in the Premiership table, and Young acknowledged that their inconsistency is at the root of this.

However, he also said that Wasps have faced a tough run of fixtures in recent weeks, which puts their current situation in context.

“This is a difficult place to come - Sale haven’t lost here since last April,” he said.

“The other games we have lost in the league, away at Quins and Leicester are also diffcult places to go, and Exeter and Saracens are top of the league, so it isn’t disastrous.

“But we have to be better - no matter who we play if we make 18 handling errors we won’t win the game.

“Hard work, desire and commitment are a given, what we have to be better with is our skill levels.

“We have had some great wins over the last six or eight weeks, but not backed them up with consistent enough performances.

“The table doesn’t lie, there is a long way to go but we have got to be better than we are.”

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