We must work out how to manage a full 80 minutes, says Saints scrum-half Taylor

The black, green and gold suffered their 11th defeat in their past 13 matches when they lost 38-15 in the Champions Cup quarter-final at Exeter Chiefs on Sunday.

Saints now have two more games of a long and largely frustrating season to go. They host Sale Sharks on Tuesday evening before travelling to Gloucester on the following Sunday.

And Taylor knows he and his team-mates have got to find a way to deliver an 80-minute performance and stop producing the lapses that are costing them so dear.

"We expect a lot of ourselves and we walked off the pitch on Sunday pretty gutted because I think we had more of a chance than the press would let you know," Taylor said.

"When we got out there we had a strong first half (Saints were 14-10 down at the break), we brought everything on the pitch but it's the same story as the rest of our season: we let the gas valve open and put pressure on ourselves by letting the pressure off them.

"We'll be really pleased with parts of the game but we've still got to work out how we can manage a full 80.

"Credit to Exeter - they're an incredible side and we came here knowing it was going to be a huge fight."

Taylor was hugely impressed with the display of young prop Manny Iyogun, who was making his first start for Saints but lasted 72 minutes and performed incredibly well.

"We had a 19-year-old as a loosehead and he'd done a full week training, it's not like he'd been wrapped in cotton wool," Taylor said.

"He went out there and he is so humble and so professional in his preparation and he did an absolute job for us at scrum time, and that gave us a huge amount of energy from the start, watching him front up to arguably the best front row out there."