The Champions Cup 'change in results' Premiership clubs prediction

Alex Sanderson has predicted that Gallagher Premiership clubs will enjoy a turnaround in results in this weekend’s Investec Champions Cup round two. The Sale boss saw his team thumped 19-38 at Glasgow last Saturday night, one of the six losses inflicted on England’s top-flight clubs by URC or Top 14 opposition.

Northampton and Saracens were the only two English clubs from an eight-strong contingent to secure an opening round victory, but Sanderson has claimed the outlook for the Premiership will be brighter following the second round of matches.

Sale start the ball rolling on Friday night with the visit of Racing 92 to Manchester, one of four Anglo-French fixtures on a weekend that also features four Prem versus URC clashes, including Northampton visiting the Bulls and Leicester and Harlequins respectively hosting the Sharks and the Stormers.

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Last weekend’s meagre two-wins-from-eight strike rate was in sharp contrast to last year’s Champions Cup first round where there were wins for seven of the eight English clubs, but Sanderson reckons the Prem will be on the money at this year’s second time of asking.

“Good enough players, good enough teams, definitely. Yeah, you will see a change in results this weekend,” predicted the Sale director of rugby. “We obviously want to be part of that turnaround, of course we do.

“But first of all there is a realisation that it can probably only be gained through the experience of being on the field and what the levels of intensity, consistency in intensity, are required in this competition.

“You can say it and you can show it but I said to them are they now any dispersions or any illusions around what is required and the lads were like, ‘No, we know what is needed’. Now it’s just about doing it.”

He added about the two-from-eight record: “I don’t think many of them were far off but you don’t have to be far off with the level of competition and opposition for the scoreline to blow out.

“We were looking at some of our processes, our statistics, just at our breakdown, our effectiveness, and they measured pretty similar to how they were against Leicester but you get turned over against Glasgow and they’re scoring two phases later.

“That was a realisation, a bit of a learning curve for us that if we want to not just compete but win this cup, get to the latter stages of this cup, there are certain areas of our game where we have got to level up and it’s usually those areas of the collision both sides of the ball.

“Coming off the back of Leicester and a really good performance, even those standards weren’t good enough against Glasgow away so it’s a little bit of a learning curve. We just said to ourselves we need to up the levels, we can’t accept that last week was good enough… that’s why it is a great cup.”