Aviva Premiership mid-term review: Can Wasps stop mighty Saracens and will Bristol survive immediate relegation?

As the half-way point passes for the 2016/17 season, Hugh Godwin takes a club-by-club look at the Aviva Premiership

Danny Care talks to his Harlequins team mates after victory against Gloucester the 'Big Game 9' (Getty)

Bath

The Todd Blackadder regime is quietly producing results while the dust continues to settle on a disruptive 2015-16 (Mike Ford out, Sam Burgess in and out, and all that). To win eight matches from 11 in the Aviva Premiership this season while barely seeing the likes of Taulupe Faletau, Luke Charteris, Rhys Priestland, Francois Louw and Ant Watson is some achievement, and one based on sound defence; the Christmas Eve blip at Wasps aside. No one quite knows yet what a settled Bath team looks like, and the likely departure of fly-half George Ford next summer is a quandary for Blackadder to manage carefully, but new Aussie centre Ben Tapuai has started impressively, and the play-offs appear well within reach. (Rating: B)

Bristol

If it is no certainty that the Boxing-Day victory over Worcester will represent salvation for the previously winless bottom-feeders of Bristol, it didn’t half help. Acting head coach (and proud Bristolian) Mark Tainton presided over a performance of bulging-eyes intensity allied with good discipline, even after what might otherwise have been a morale-shattering blow of an early red card to the returning playmaker Tusi Pusi (quite what offence the Samoan genuinely committed as Worcester’s Jamie Shillcock leapt above him is a question for another time). Barrelling Bristol centre Will Hurrell had a stormer opposite Worcester’s new England cap Ben Te’o, and Ashton Gate lips are already smacking at the return fixture at Sixways in early March. (Rating: D)

James Phillips of Bristol (Getty)

Exeter Chiefs

A slow burner of a season to begin with at Sandy Park, but the promising signs in last weekend’s win over Leicester included a rolling maul that put the visitors’ version definitively in the shade, and the resumption of back-rower Thomas Waldrom’s astounding gift for try-scoring – the former Tiger has seven for the season now, level with Wasps wing Christian Wade and one ahead of Gloucester’s Scotland centre Matt Scott. The Exeter boss Rob Baxter has admitted with characteristic candour that the expectation engendered by reaching a first Premiership final last May had been a difficult challenge, but four league wins on the bounce for the Chiefs have set up this Saturday’s trip to fellow contenders Bath beautifully. (Rating: B-)

Thomas Waldrom in action for Exeter Chiefs (Getty)

Gloucester

The bumper holiday crowd who watched Gloucester edged out 28-24 by hosts Harlequins at Twickenham were treated, if that is the word, to regular sights of a glum-looking David Humphreys on the stadium’s big screens. Frankly, the hangdog expression worn by the Cherry-and-Whites’ boss has not altered much since the season’s opening night when his team were turned over at home by Leicester. The suspicion that Gloucester have at least one fly-half too many will be resolved by player movements next summer but right now the injury to star prop John Afoa, and the rumours of a possible departure for flanker Matt Kvesic, mean the memories of a dominant Gloucester pack grow ever more sepia-toned by the day, despite the surging efforts of Wales flanker Ross Moriarty. (Rating: D-)

Harlequins

Unstoppable at home, dismal away - that’s Harlequins, whose 150th anniversary season is going swimmingly at The Stoop, where they are unbeaten, as well as at their “second” home, Twickenham, where Bristol were beaten on the opening weekend and Gloucester suffered likewise this week. The multi-coloured ones are arguably hurt more than any other club by their strong representation in the England team, and the extension of former Australia captain James Horwill’s contract, together with the signing of Namibia captain Renaldo Bothma for next season, are signs of an impending shift in the leadership responsibilities. Two home wins over Saracens in 2016, including a defensive masterclass in late September, screamed of serious quality when Quins get it right. (Rating: C)

Marland Yarde is brought down during his side's recent game against Gloucester (Getty)

Leicester Tigers

Much like Harlequins, it is difficult to know what to make of the Tigers. Superficially, fifth place in the Premiership is acceptable given the injuries and vast turnover in personnel their squad has undergone in recent times, and any team would struggle to cover the absence of £800,000-worth of injured centres in Matt Toomua and Manu Tuilagi. But the heavy away losses to Glasgow and Munster in Europe, and Exeter in the Premiership last weekend, have invited questions over the efficacy of Richard Cockerill’s working relationship with head coach Aaron Mauger. A decent litmus test will be the clever use or otherwise of the thankfully recently-restored Tuilagi. (Rating: C)

Manu Tuilagi has struggled with injury this season (Getty)

Newcastle Falcons

There is a serious case for regarding Newcastle as the Premiership’s club of the season to date. Five wins has matched their entire output of 2015-16, when they escaped relegation by a skinny seven points, and Dean Richards is proving once again that his success in building teams at Leicester and Harlequins was no fluke. Regular Kingston Park-ites yearn for the day when flanker and occasional captain Mark Wilson’s league-leading tackle count (136 in 11 matches) and all-round work-rate is finally recognised by an England call-up, even if it is only to Eddie Jones’s pithily-titled “next elite player squad” of 20 players who sit below the top 45 . (Rating: C+)

Northampton Saints

Beating Sale at Franklin’s Gardens on the eve of Christmas Eve could not disguise the pall of uncertainty hanging over the Saints. The departure of backs coach Alex King in October was a puzzling development that left his former colleagues Jim Mallinder and Dorian West exposed to increasing criticism of the league’s lowest try-scorers (17) and hammered by one calamity after another, including an ankle injury to Mallinder’s son Harry, the six-week ban picked up by hooker Dylan Hartley and the continuing angst over the wellbeing of Wales wing George North. If only all parts of the team could match the consistency of loosehead prop Alex Waller who has extended his Premiership record to 129 consecutive appearances. (Rating: D-)

Jim Mallinder faces ever growing criticism at Saints (Getty)

Sale Sharks

Initial signs are that the Sharks have signed a couple of belters in the rugby league wings Josh Charnley and Denny Solomona, although the legal action threatened by the latter’s former employers Castleford over Solomona’s “retirement” from the 13-a-side game looms in the background. Former Sale maestro Mark Cueto may be about to lose his all-time Premiership try-scoring record to Bristol’s Tom Varndell, but Charnley and Solomona are the north-west of England’s heirs apparent, with full-back Mike Haley not far behind as an attacking threat. In common with Northampton, there is a comparative weakness at fly-half, and an upturn all round is needed soon if qualifying for the European Cup is going to be repeated. (Rating: D)

Saracens

The reigning champions are another club prone to being hit hard by international call-ups, but Saracens have continued to set witheringly good defensive standards, with a league-leading total of just nine tries conceded in 11 Premiership matches this season (Northampton and Bath are the next meanest operators, on 16 and 17 respectively). Recent injuries to the Vunipola brothers, Mako and Billy, are providing a fresh test of Sarries’ deep pool of talent, but the seemingly seamless introduction of new signings of Schalk Burger, Sean Maitland and Alex Lozowski speaks of a well-organised coaching set-up and solid pattern of play that ought to ensure a home play-off place when it comes to the big shakedown in May. (Rating: A)

New signing Schalk Burger has slotted in seamlessly at Saracens (Getty)

Wasps

The very lack of a definitive identity while Wasps tried and failed to establish a permanent home in High Wycombe has eased the transition to their new life in Coventry, where five-figure crowds have flocked almost out of nowhere to cheer an unbeaten 2016 for the league’s most upwardly-mobile club at the Ricoh Arena. A multi-million-pound bond paying recession-busting interest rates to its investors has helped boost Wasps’ playing squad, with Australian genius Kurtley Beale soon to be joined by Springbok full-back Willie le Roux. A home play-off place in May must be the aim, and the attacking style anchored by Joe Launchbury, the soon-to-return James Haskell and their friends in the pack might just turn the Waspies into everyone’s favourite second club. (Rating: A+)

Worcester Warriors

Losing to 14-man Bristol was a dismal effort on Boxing Day, and confirmed the collywobbles felt by onlookers ever since director of rugby Dean Ryan quit Sixways in the summer to work for the Rugby Football Union, taking his previously bullish talk of five-year-plans and so on with him. Former Wales lock Phil Davies is said to be on his way to assist Ryan’s successor Carl Hogg as a coaching consultant, and the glass-half-full vision is for influential scrum-half Francois Hougaard to inspire an upsurge when the 28-year-old Springbok returns from injury next month. The glut of basic errors made in Monday’s big match at Ashton Gate, hard on the heels of centre Ben Te’o giving a pallid appraisal of the overall Worcester set-up, suggests otherwise. (Rating: E)