DARYL Powell blasted his Warrington Wolves side’s display in defeat to Catalans Dragons as “not acceptable on any level.”

Perhaps more worryingly, however, the head coach opined that the result had been coming due to their performances of late.

A Dragons side missing several key players left The Halliwell Jones Stadium with a 24-18 victory – their first away win over The Wire since 2011.

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Josh Charnley’s late double gave the hosts a sniff of an improbably comeback, but Steve McNamara’s side held out for a deserved win.

Powell was scathing in his post-match assessment, saying his side’s mentality must change.

“That was poor, right from the start. It was disappointing on every level,” he said.

“I made the players aware that this will not be acceptable on any level. That kind of performance has to change.

“In their heads now, they have to know that performance isn’t acceptable.

“I just said to them that has been coming. Last week you could see something like that was coming.

“The mentality has got to change – 100 per cent.

“I said right from the start that it doesn’t matter who they’ve got missing, they’ve got a good mentality and they showed that tonight.

“It took 55 minutes for us to start having a go.”

The sides went into half time level after Matty Ashton’s try had cancelled out the opening score of the game from Catalans second rower Matt Whitley.

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However, 18 unanswered points after the break proved critical as Arthur Romano, Mitchell Pearce and Mickael Goudemand crossed for the visitors, with Romano and Goudemand’s tries given after lengthy video referee consultations.

Powell felt his side were on the end of a tough call from referee Liam Moore in the build-up to Pearce’s try but insisted that did not excuse his side.

“It was a poor call for a penalty that flipped the game a little bit – I saw the video in the box, Rob Mulhern is onside and they score off the back of that,” he said.

“I’m not using that as an excuse, I just thought it’s not acceptable.

“They picked our short sides all game and we didn’t fix that up after we spoke about it at half time.”

Once again, Warrington found metres through the middle of the field hard to come by as their pack struggled to make an impact.

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The lack of size in the Wire pack has been a point of contention for supporters and pundits alike, both in the build-up to this season and those gone before.

When asked whether he felt he had enough up front to compete, Powell said: “We dropped four balls in the first half in our own half.

“We could have the biggest pack in the world but if we’re doing that, we’re going to put ourselves under pressure.

“We hurt ourselves and we lost the energy battle as a result of those errors.”

It is Wolves’ first Super League defeat under Powell’s charge after starting the season with three victories.

Their quest to bounce back is a perilous one, with a trip to defending champions St Helens, who won convincingly at Hull KR to make it four wins out of four, up next.

“I just don’t think we’ve got going yet, if I’m honest,” Powell said.

“We’ve won three games but we haven’t got a flow to our game.

“Defensively, I think we’ve been losing rucks consistently and particularly in the first half, both sides of the ball we were poor.

“We’ve got to fix ourselves up pretty quick and I’m expecting a response straight away from the players.

“Next week’s as tough a test as it gets – I’ve been watching how they’ve been going about things and they have the edge that we need. We’ve got to find that pretty quick.

“It's a great opportunity to see our mentality.

“They are the marker and if you watch their line speed at the moment, they’re coming for us and we best be ready for it.

“We need to get ourselves going – we need the boys to be tougher than we are being at the minute.”