UNHAPPY Warriors boss Richard Hill is set to shake up his team for the vital New Year’s Day trip to Wasps in the Aviva Premiership.

In their previous games, Worcester were outclassed 32-13 by Leicester Tigers at a packed-out Sixways and the London club went down 39-10 at Gloucester.

Dai Young’s Wasps sit just three points ahead of Warriors in the table and Hill is desperate for his side to start climbing away from the league’s drop-zone.

So Sunday’s game at High Wycombe’s Adams Park (3pm) is a key encounter, while basement boys Newcastle tackle Northampton Saints at home on New Year’s Eve.

The Sixways head coach said: “I wasn’t happy with the performance against Leicester — we need a reaction as we underperformed and that is not good enough.

“We rotated some of the squad for the trip to Bucharest and then put 57 points on the same team 12 days ago.

“It wasn’t really the stern test we needed before we went into a game like Tuesday’s. Leicester had Clermont Auvergne, so they were ready.

“The Leicester match will get us back in the groove and we have a short turnaround now. We have got to have a reaction.

“Wasps will want a win after what happened at Gloucester. They are talking the same way, so it is about two teams going in trying to prove a point.”

Reflecting on the Tigers defeat, Hill was left to lament a poor opening quarter of the game which saw the powerful visitors race into an unassailable lead.

Hill added: “We lost it in the first 20 minutes. It was a very poor start, unlike us, and you can’t do that at home in front of your own crowd.

“We needed a good start to get the crowd behind us and put the pressure on Leicester — that was the worst possible start. After that, it was hard work to catch up.

“I thought the sin-binning of Chris Jones on half-time didn’t help us either but, having said that, we had a strategy for the first 10 minutes of the second period to concede no points and, when Chris came back on, to step the pace back up.

“In that first 15-minute period of the second-half, we were 10-0 up but the machine of Leicester had some good subs to come on and they played with good pace. It was too much to catch up.

“There was a lack of urgency, we were slow to react, didn’t come off the line aggressively in the first 20 minutes and didn’t have any continuity.”