Rob Baxter admits his Exeter Chiefs side are under-performing at the moment after they suffered a fourth straight loss.
Sunday's last gasp 28-26 defeat against London Irish at the Madejski Stadium came after Sale, Bath and Gloucester recorded wins against the Chiefs.
The losing bonus point Baxter's men picked up saw them climb a place to fifth in the Aviva Premiership going into the four-week break for European and LV= Cup action.
However, the Sandy Park boss was in honest mood as he reflected on the latest setback, admitting his players are not handling the pressure of competing at the top very well.
Baxter thinks the players have to go back to playing as they did earlier this season, when they won eight matches on the spin, and not expect things to happen for them.
"We're aware we're under-performing a bit at the moment. I'm not going to make any excuses for it, it's for us to deal with as a team as we mature and move forward," Baxter said.
"We got ourselves in a great position early in the season, and as much as we've tried to talk to the players about it being positive pressure it's still a different kind of pressure that we've got to learn to deal with.
"We haven't dealt with it that well. The Sale game you can almost put down to an away-day blip in difficult conditions, and the Bath one was tough but last weekend's game (against Wasps) shows they're a good team, particularly at home. Those two games you can almost take in isolation.
"We know we've under-performed in the last two weeks (against Gloucester and London Irish) and the truth is we haven't dealt with the pressure of needing to get points in those two games as well as we would have liked. We've got to discuss that, and there are probably various reasons for it.
"It's not like it's a consistent theme for us. It's partly people trying a bit too hard combined with expecting something to happen in the game. If we run a play that gained us great ground or we won a penalty or we scored a try from earlier in the season, I think we hope and expect we'll have the same result. It won't always have the same result because things are different week by week."
Exeter had dropped from third to sixth following their defeat at home against Gloucester but travelled to Reading as hot favourites to win given the Exiles' lowly league position.
The visitors turned around 13-5 up, but were 22-13 down after 58 minutes as Irish scored their fourth try through Blair Cowan.
Dave Ewers pulled a try back for the Chiefs which Gareth Steenson converted to cut the gap to a point, with the fly-half then kicking two penalties to one from Tom Homer to lead 26-25 with four minutes to go.
There was still time for the Exiles to have one last chance, and Shane Geraghty dropped a goal with the last kick of the game to win it.
Baxter is keen for his players to learn to handle the pressure that has been their undoing, rather than shield them from it.
"I don't want to take all the pressure off the players because that's how we'll learn to deal with it," he said. "However, by understanding the nature of the pressure we can ease it off ourselves a little bit and get back to each player doing their job very well, almost relaxing and feeling confident that if they do things well and are very direct in what they want to do, ultimately that's what creates the big team performance."
Steenson had earlier opened the scoring with a penalty before Cowan's first try of the game.
The Exeter fly-half landed another penalty and also converted Dean Mumm's try.
Tom Guest gave the Exiles a good start to the second half with a try that Geraghty converted before Alex Lewington dotted down their third.
