Sale chief executive Steve Diamond praised his team after they finished an unsettled week on a high by defeating London Irish 21-9.
We lost our discipline
He added: "We lost our discipline and that cost us but, fair play to them, they scored twice against us and we fell off tackles against their power centres a couple of times.
"We believed we could peg them back so we made a tactical change to play with three locks in an attempt to try and squeeze them.
"At 15-9 we looked like we were going to turn things around but, at the end of the day, we came away without even a bonus point, so we've got egg on our face now."
