WARRIORS director of rugby John Brain has described talk of finishing in the top four of the Guinness Premiership this season as "not really relevant."

Friday night's victory over Bristol leaves Worcester in sixth place in the table and Brain admits he would be satisfied if they are in the same position come May.

"We finished ninth last year and the goal for this season was to finish better than ninth," he said. "We felt that, on balance, we have improved the squad a little bit and we could finish in the top six if we played well. And that is still realistic for us.

"To talk about us as one of the top four teams in this league is not really relevant. That's where we want to be and we want to get there as soon as we can.

"But the top half of this table will be a good result for us in our second season if we can achieve that."

After an impressive run of form during autumn, Warriors moved up to fourth in the table but a dip in the matches immediately after Christmas has dropped them back into the mid-table position they currently occupy.

The victory against Bristol took Worcester seven points clear of the West Country side and they also have a six-point advantage over the side in seventh place - Newcastle Falcons.

"I think we are in a good position," said Brain. "It was important for us to win (against Bristol) because we had lost the last three league games against sides we should have beaten.

"But that's what this job is about. You have to assess yourself after performances like that and we've done that. And the last three weeks our performances have improved, which culminated in this victory."

Brain was full of praise for his side's display at the Memorial Ground, which completed a home and away double over the Premiership's newest arrivals.

"I think we showed a great deal of character," he said. "The try that resulted from the charge-down on Shane Drahm should have been the turning point of the game.

"We showed an awful lot of character to come back after that and go on and win. We had a tough Christmas and the last couple of weeks, we have had a good look at ourselves and today I think we discovered some of the resolve for which we were renowned last season and the start of this."

Bristol is not the easiest place to visit as Sale and Leicester both found out. But Worcester's defence saw them through.

"Usually when you play away in this league, you have probably got to make more tackles than the home team and we did make a lot of tackles," said Brian.

"I thought Bristol tactically were pretty good. We only had two line-outs in the whole game. We did a lot of defending and we scored a try from a turnover but the character we showed and the physicality we showed was very good.

"I don't think this is an easy place to win. If you are going to come and win here you have to work extremely hard for it and we had to do that."