Steve Diamond gets brutally honest on the future of some of his players

Newcastle Falcons boss Steve Diamond will attempt to pull off a third successive Gallagher Premiership home win by convincing his players they can knock over the “Galacticos” of Bath at Kington Park on Saturday.

Diamond is operating with a budget of £3.5m while he estimates clubs like Bath, who include Scotland No 10 Finn Russell, are spending up to £8m by using all of the £6.4m salary cap plus a marquee player and the allowed “extras” for having English qualified players.

Newcastle lost highly rated flanker Guy Pepper to Bath in the summer having failed to convince him to stay at Kingston Park and turn down Bath’s financial package and Diamond will also recognise some of his former Worcester Warriors players in the opposition including Ollie Lawrence and Ted Hill who have bolstered the West Country club’s squad.

The disparity in spending power should make this a Bath win to maintain their Premiership title challenge but Newcastle have knocked over Exeter Chiefs, now the bottom club, and former champions Saracens in successive league games at Kingston Park and Diamond is well aware of the size of the challenge on Saturday.

Fixture

Gallagher Premiership

Newcastle

15 - 40

Full-time

Bath

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He said: “Bath are one of the Galacticos of the league and have an endless budget by the looks of things and they hand pick everyone else’s squad – certainly with us. They are well coached and have top-class internationals all over the field, a fantastic set of half-backs and it could be a hard day at the office for us.

“We need Bath to have an off day and we need to play out of our skins and this is what it is about. The belief in the squad is good and we just have to make sure the skill set is there. I know we will turn up with the right attitude, then we have a good game on our hands.

“I don’t care what Bath bring because it is about us doing our own things and sticking to it. When we do we are highly competitive. “

Diamond wants to see an improvement from the European Challenge Cup losses to Pau and Dragons with a crowd of nearly 8,000 expected for this fixture – the biggest of the season. The director of rugby has told some of his squad they are not in his plans for next season as he looks to rebuild the playing pool while only spending what he insists is half of the budget of the rest of the league.

He added: “I don’t need to motivate the players because we have been written off by everyone and the mindset is very clear. We cannot put up with people not buying into the system. Individual brilliance is great but it doesn’t win you many games. We have come a long way as a group and we have to get to reality and when we beat Exeter and Saracens we have been in fear of our lives with those teams coming up here.

“One or two players haven’t bought into what we want to do as a squad and at the moment if we don’t buy in 100 per cent then we don’t win those games. The last two games in Europe were lost by narrow margins and we will learn from them.”