WORCESTER Warriors' head coach Jonathan Thomas admits his side need to work "harder than everybody else" if they are to start getting some wins on the board.

Warriors were humbled by Exeter Chiefs down south last weekend as they were bullied off the park by a clinical Exeter side, who scored three tries in each half to secure a 42-5 win.

A late score from Justin Clegg meant it was not 'nul points' for the visitors but it hardly acted as any sort of consolation.

Having won their opening Gallagher Premiership fixture, Warriors have now registered three defeats in a row and in the last two, Gloucester and Exeter, they have been well off the pace.

Worcester host league leaders Leicester Tigers next week, so it gets no easier and Thomas knows there's a lot of work to be done.

"The biggest thing for us is we need to work incredibly hard in the week ahead of Leicester," he said.

"We have to work harder than everyone else and we have to learn faster because of those new combinations. All we can do is review the game and be honest with each other and not make the same mistakes next week.

"There were a huge amount of opportunities for us in the first 20 minutes; we had four entries into the 22, we had four line breaks that we dropped the ball and a couple of penalties that led to their first two tries.

"When you come to a place like this you have to take your chances and we didn't do that. The game is about exerting pressure on your opponent and we relieved a lot of it through errors and not taking chances.

"We were playing catch up and then we started playing as individuals and that's always the danger, working hard as individuals but rugby is a team game so there is a lot of work to do."

Warriors had kept Exeter out in the main in the opening quarter but tries from Dave Ewers, Sam Simmonds and Santiago Cordero had Chiefs 21-0 up at half-time.

Thomas believed his side could still cause problems at the break but Simmonds and Cordero scored again to put the game to bed before Joe Simmonds scored the sixth late on.

"What I said to the players at half-time was that, the game was looking similar to Harlequins away when we made a few errors and went down at the break so it was just highlighting to the players, there are chances out there," he added.

"And then it's about executing and that's what we didn’t do."

Worcester unleashed their British and Irish Lions duo for the first time in the game but neither Duhan van der Merwe or Rory Sutherland could impact the result and Thomas knows it will take time for them to get up to speed at their new club.

"It's always challenging coming into a new team," he added.

"The two lads worked hard and they will get better the more they are in our system. The game is about success over time and working hard over time and they will get better the more they play with the other lads."