Mark McCall slammed Saracens’ performance despite a 37-31 win at home to basement side Bath on Saturday. 

Sarries looked to be coasting to a fifth win from five in the Gallagher Premiership, leading 37-17 with 20 minutes to play, before Bath staged a late comeback which the hosts just about staved off. 

And with sterner tests to come in both domestic and European action, McCall demanded a better mentality from his players post-match. 

"Whether we deserved to lose or not, I'm not sure, but it's a game we could have lost,” the director of rugby said. “It was a very disappointing performance. 

"It was a game that shows the Premiership is incredibly competitive. If your attitude is not what it needs to be, you can get pulled into a game that we could have easily lost. 

"It manifests itself in certain things, you look at how often we were turned over at the breakdown today and I think we had a lot of players that were happy to do the comfortable and big stuff, but not the small stuff that everybody needs to do. 

"If you want to play the kind of game we want to play, people doing those detailed things well is a necessity, and it wasn't today. 

"When we did turn the ball over a lot of their scores came from our mistakes, they were very clinical with that."  

A try within two minutes from Alex Goode had put Sarries in the driving seat before Bath hit back with a Matt Gallagher effort five minutes later.

The boot of Owen Farrell kept the scoreboard ticking over before tries from Max Malins, Elliot Daly, and Alex Lewington saw the league leaders tighten their grip on a five-point haul. 

But tries from Max Ojomoh and Wesley White in the final quarter set up a nervy finish, and young hooker Kapeli Pifeleti felt there was plenty for his side to improve on going forward. 

“A win is a win, we’ll take it, especially the way Bath played today but we’ll look at ourselves, see what went wrong, what went well and move forward,” added Pifeleti. 

“We knew the threat Bath were going to pose today. We said it throughout the week, they’re a team that pride themselves in the forward pack so we needed to front up and match them physically. 

“I felt like we’ve got that in strides but just not consistent enough but we held ourselves through.  

“We said at half-time, we need a shift in attitude and I feel like we did it – just not enough to close out the game the way that we wanted to.” 

Pifeleti impressed from the front-row at the StoneX Stadium, putting in an all-action display for 79 minutes, and the USA international admitted he was enjoying playing in such a star-studded lineup. 

“It was surreal to play with players of the calibre of Saracens,” he added.  

“Not only to play with my cousins Mako [Vunipola], Bill, and Manu but with players like Maro [Itoje], all of them, it’s pretty special.  

“To be out there with them, learning from them, it’s pretty good.”