Exeter Chiefs: Rob Baxter predicts return to form for struggling side

Baxter was keen to play down the seriousness of his side’s poor start, pointing out Exeter did not get a bonus point at Northampton last term and lost by a bigger margin at Saracens than they did last week in falling 29-14.

But is was the manner of their loss at home Leicester last month, which Baxter described as ‘baffling’, that has left questions around the opening four weeks of the season.

“We should have controlled the end of that game,” he said.

“But I can show you clips of the game where there’s a guy with his hand in touch carrying the ball in that period at the last stages of that game that gets missed.

“If the referee blows his whistle because the touch judge sees that or the referee sees it, we’d be sitting here on five points now having gone through two of probably our toughest away games – having picked up a point that we didn’t pick up last year.

“We’d actually be ahead of the curve from where we were last year – and people thought we were pretty good last year.

“That’s one way of looking at it, the other way of looking at it is that we haven’t actually won a game yet.

“That’s the truth, and now we’re going against a Bristol team that have found some real form and are playing very well.

“The reality is if we don’t win then that’s another home game that we won last year that we won’t have won, and I can understand people going ‘now we’re behind the curve’ and by that stage we probably would be.”