West admits Northampton Saints will have to be at their best against Bath

The west country outfit have won their past six games to reignite hopes of a top-four finish in this season’s Aviva Premiership.

Saints, too, continue to harbour hopes of a play-off push as they beat Worcester 27-18 on Saturday to stay in touch with fourth-placed Wasps.

Jim Mallinder’s men will be eager to follow up their good away performance with a home win this weekend, but forwards coach West knows beating Bath will be far from easy.

“They’re a good team,” said West. “They’re probably a team in a similar sort of position as a whole: club wise, the size of the club, the amount of money they spend. It will be a tight game.

“Things haven’t been too bad for us. We’ve obviously lost a few games we think we should have won, but we’ve created a lot of chances and we’ve just got to get better at finishing them.

“Bath are playing particularly well at the minute. They’re a good side, they’ve got a good pack and we need to be at our best to compete with them.”

Following Saturday’s win at Worcester, which owed much to a dominant performance from the Saints pack, West claimed recent criticism of his side had provided inspiration.

And he is adamant the squad will keep working hard to prove people wrong as they look to improve their current sixth place standing.

He said: “We know what we are. We have created a lot of chances and we’re working hard. We know we’ve made mistakes but we’ve been pretty close in every game we’ve played.

“There’s no givens in this game, every game’s a hard game and you win some you lose some. We’ve just got to keep working hard.

“We are close together as a squad. We’re pretty open, we talk well and we respond to the criticism we’ve had like we did on Saturday.”