Leeds Carnegie Director of Rugby Stuart Lancaster said that his team and coaching staff were all hurting after their 34-20 defeat to Sale but that would come back even stronger to face Wasps next Saturday.
Leeds scored three tries in front of a bumper crowd of 11,116, the third biggest in the club's history and the biggest of the season, but they were undone by the kicking of Charlie Hodgson and two quick fire tries after the hour.
Speaking after the game Lancaster said, "I felt we worked extremely hard but the bottom line is that we did not come away with anything from the game, as a consequence it hurts. However, I am a firm believer in the theory that if you continue to work hard enough, for long enough, you will get your rewards and we are continuing to move forwards.
"The performance was significantly better than last week at Bath. The set piece went well and on attack we challenged their defence. I think the difference between the two sides was their kicking game. Charlie Hodgson controlled the game well whereas we did not execute the game plan we had worked on. In the first half we wanted to kick to challenge but we did not get to do that as often as we wanted to," added Lancaster. 
When asked if the Guinness Premiership table would now begin to worry his players he added, "It is certainly not something I am focussing on and I would be very surprised if the players were thinking about it. It is something we got used to last season, every week all anyone wanted to talk to us about was the table and we were able to stay focused on the next game, I don't see why that would be a problem now.
"There was a great spirit shown by the team today. I believe performance follows attitude and you could see that we had our attitude right from the start and we got a good performance. Unfortunately we were up against a very good Sale team who took every opportunity they had," added Lancaster.