Exeter director of rugby Rob Baxter told Radio Devon:
“Every game’s important because we’ve got to try and find some winning momentum.
“I’ve just said to the lads, ‘I’m not going to try to find positives for you every week’. If you start finding positives in losing when you shouldn’t, what you do is you actually start to accept being a loser, and I’m not going to let the lads just accept that tonight was OK.
“They’ve got to learn quicker. What annoys me is everybody says, ‘these lads have got to play’. Sometimes there’s a reason why they don’t play and it’s because they do silly things. We see them doing them in training and it makes you doubt picking them, because you’re worried about what might happen in the game. The problem is that’s what’s been reflected tonight.
“I’m not going to keep saying, ‘well done, we scored some good tries’, because so much of the territory we gave up was completely brainless territory.
“The penalty count is against us anyway, but if we hadn’t been able to get scrum pens, the penalty count would have been ridiculous against us.”
Sale: Keogh; Roebuck, Louw, Ma’asi-White, Wills; Davies, Hanson; McEachran, Longstaff, Dlamini, Hogg, Hodkinson, Scheepers, Woodman, Kelly
Replacements: Jibulu, Spencer, Bell, Logan, Austin, Bayston, Pasco, D Opoku-Fordjour
Exeter: Harris; Brown-Bampoe, Lilley, Wimbush, Poynton; Coen, Wolstenholme; Goodrick-Clarke, Dweba, Painter, Pearson, Beckerleg, Goedhals, Worley-Brady, Tuipulotu
Replacements: Norey, McArthur, J Roots, Nkwocha, Bailey, Cairns, Batson, McIntosh
Referee: Alex Thomas