WORCESTER'S director of rugby John Brain insists the mood at Sixways is not one of "desperation" despite his side suffering their third successive defeat in the Guinness Premiership.

Warriors went down 25-13 to Sale, leaving them bottom of the table with only one point.

But Brain believes his team are improving all the time and it is only a matter of time before they start to pick up results.

"I think we probably deserved a bonus point but we improved our performance from the previous two games," he said.

"It wasn't good enough to get any points but I think certainly, we can take quite a bit from that game.

"I don't think we have reached desperation stage. After all, I have been here when we have lost the first six games.

"We played very badly on the opening day of the season and since then we have played progressively better.

"All we have got from that is one point. What we have to do is focus on the way we are playing and keep improving that. We have got the quality of player here and the quality of team to pick up wins."

The display against Sale was certainly a significant im-provement on their capitulation to Bristol but the Prem-iership champions were on their game and scored a late try to deny Worcester a bonus point.

"Some of the rugby we played on Friday night would have been good enough to beat teams in this league," said Brain. "When we made mistakes, they punished us because they are obviously a quality team.

"I think some of our defence was good. We didn't get all the reward we should have done at the tackle but generally I think we were building momentum in the second-half and then gave away a penalty for crossing.

"That was quite a crucial moment in the game because they then had us on the defensive for quite some time.

"And we didn't get anything productive out of their sin-bin other than the three points."

Brain went to see referee Martin Fox at half-time after his side were persistently penalised at the scrum.

He said: "When Sebastien Bruno stands up because he doesn't want to go down or back, I would expect to get some dividends from that.

"I think we were happy with the way the scrum was working in the first-half."