EXETER Chiefs director of rugby Rob Baxter gave a brutally honest assessment of his side after their disappointing 36-19 defeat at Premiership bottom side Bath on Sunday.

Exeter travelled in confidence, but after leading 14-7 at one stage, they shipped 33 unanswered points.

It is the latest in a series of heavy away defeats for Exeter, following on from Harlequins and Saracens in the past three months, and they have not won away from home in the league since October.

A very controlled but angry Baxter said: "It is probably as poor as we have been for a long time as a team, and individually really.

"I'm struggling to see a bright spot. I don't think anyone particularly had a good game, and I don't think there is any area of our game where we can say it really held up well.

"I will have a good chat with the coaches but we have got to do something. Now whether that is a considerable amount of change needs to happen here and we need to go right back to the very, very basics, the fundamentals, of what we want to do, with a different group of players, that might be how far we are, because this mystery between us being very competitive at certain times, and so uncompetitive at times, particularly in these away games, it is something I have got to talk about openly and honestly with the players.

"At the end of the day there are two weapons. The players have got one of them, which is how they perform, and I have got one which is selection, and I'm not sure which one has got to come first.

"You are always hoping the player one comes first and they show that they buy into how we want to play.

"One of the golden rules today was what we did in the middle third of the pitch, and we were doing stuff like running offside at kick-offs and restarts, and there is some stuff that is kind of unforgivable in a professional environment.

"Competitive penalties where two guys are fighting over the ball and it is a 50-50 call, you take those on the chin because that's what makes you a competitive team, Bath had one or two of those, but ours were coming in from everywhere.

"We are just finding ways of hurting ourselves over and over and over again, and whether it is a lack of focus, a lack of direction, whether it is the players are looking around and just don't believe because players are leaving and they are worried about next year, all of these are things I have got to get my head around, and decide which ones it is."

It was a very winnable game for the Chiefs but they were very much the architects of their own downfall.

Baxter added: "We were the architects of everything we did. We are doing this way too often, particularly away from home. We have got to start addressing these things.

"Some of those guys who started to show some form in the Premiership Cup, maybe they have just got to come into the side, that's the truth. If we are going to take pain we will take pain with those guys because they want to get better and they want to go and win games and win trophies.

"We have always quite enjoyed taking pain at Exeter with the right group of guys, but at the moment we are taking pain with the wrong group of guys."

The Chiefs conceded another 18 penalties at The Rec, which has been a recurring theme for a large part of the season, and Baxter explained: "It is something I am trying to work on, and in these last couple of weeks I have really made a point of tackling it, but the problem is we probably left it a little late. It is probably something that dripped into our game earlier in the season and we never really got on top of it in any one area, whether it be set piece, around defence, offside, and it is something we have got to fight very hard to get right now."

Exeter now need to win their last three games - at home to Bristol and away to third-place Leicester and fourth-spot London Irish - to stand any chance of making the end-of-season play-offs, but Baxter commented: "We have got to win the last three, but at the minute, we have got two of them away from home and we will strap on a tin hat and see what happens, that's what it feels like to me a little bit at the moment.

"There are things we can do, there are things that I have got to obviously address and work at, and nobody has felt this game more than I have today.

"There are a lot of Exeter supporters who have travelled up here today, and I feel a bit embarrassed to be representing us today, because they are the guys who are spending their money making the journeys, they have stood with us through a lot of good times, but at the moment they are having to stay tough because coming away to support Exeter at the moment is tough.

"At the moment the expectation is that we are going to play quite poorly, I don't mind us losing but there shouldn't be an expectation that we are going to play quite poorly, and we have got to change that."

The Chiefs take a break from the Premiership on Sunday when they face their round of 16 Champions Cup tie at home to French side Montpellier at Sandy Park (12.30pm), and Baxter said: "I said to the lads afterwards, 'what should I do? should I sugar coat this and say come one, let's keep our morale high for next week?', but there's no point because we are not going to do very well playing like we are playing.

"The minute we end up in a really competitive Heineken Cup game, if any of those things that happened today rear their heads, we're done, so I'd rather go into that game with a group that are going to fight, and understand how we fight, and really understand what I expect from someone playing for Exeter, and we start that process now, rather than try and cling onto a dream where the reality is it isn't going to happen unless we change things."