THERE won’t be many who saw Northampton Saints’ 50-point destruction of Gloucester who will be expecting them to slip up against Wasps on Sunday.

The defending champions demolished a Cherry and Whites team predicted by many to challenge for Europe this season with a performance so frightening it would have drained the blood from the faces of future opponents.

The power up front was immense and the precision behind was deadly as they ran in eight tries.

Wasps director of rugby Dai Young said: “They were very impressive. I think it was the performance of the weekend. They hit the ground running and look the complete package.

“They’ve got power up front and players behind who can cause you problems.

“They don’t have any out and out weaknesses.”

Wasps should know. The last time the teams met Northampton responded to going 13-0 behind by scoring 74 unanswered points and inflicting on Wasps their heaviest ever Premiership defeat.

With both eyes fixed on a European showdown with Stade Francais, Wasps went to Franklin’s Gardens significantly understrength last spring.

Even so, the subsequent mauling was still shocking to watch.

Young said: “It was the lesser of two evils. We wanted to get into Europe and we did it.

“But I didn’t expect to lose by that much and I had to take a few punches on the jaw after that and rightly so. It was probably the worst feeling all season.”

Perhaps understandably though, Young prefers instead to take encouragement from recent home games against the Saints.

Two seasons ago they led 24-19 only to lose to a converted try in the final play of the game, while last December they were 15-14 ahead until Stephen Myler landed a last minute penalty to snatch it.

Young said: “Those results were heartbreaking, but we’ve got a better side now and there is no reason why we can’t pull off a result if we get our game going.

“We’re under no illusions. We know how tough it’s going to be. We know what they’re going to bring but we’ve got to make sure we match them.

“Their set piece is a points matching for them and we’ve got to at least get parity with them there if we want to get something out of the game.

“We’ve got to move them about a bit and play with tempo.

“But at the end of the day it’s 15 against 15 and we’ve got some quality players ourselves.

“If we can beat them it will be a massive statement.”