Key stats from Warrington Wolves' Salford Red Devils loss

However, a look at the match stats tells you just how much they struggled in certain areas of their Round Nine defeat.

Here’s a look at some of the key figures from the game…

In a few negative areas, Wire’s figures were as high as they have been for a while.

They were on the wrong side of the counts for errors (11) and missed tackles (42), with every Wire player bar James Harrison and Joe Bullock, who was only on the field for a short period, missing at least one.

Salford spent more time in attacking positions – 21 play-the-balls in the opposition 20 compared to Wire’s 18 – made more metres (1,242 to 1,119) and completed more sets (28 to 26), all key metrics for victory.

Wire’s overall completion rate of 78 per cent is not drastically low but for a side living pretty much exclusively in the high-80s at worst, it is quite a downturn.

Wire struggle through the middle

On paper at least, Wire appeared to possess the stronger pack – indeed, the starting set of forwards is arguably their first-choice set and barring Zane Musgrove, everyone was available.

To that end, the fact they struggled to get anything going through the middle of the field was a surprise.

Some of the credit for that has to go to Salford for keeping a lid on Wire in that area to the point no Warrington forward cleared the 100m mark.

Their leading pack player in that regard was hooker Danny Walker, whose 87 metres were largely made up of two line breaks while Paul Vaughan (80m) and James Harrison (63m) were subdued.

By contrast, two of Salford’s middle-unit players topped three figures – Jack Ormondroyd’s impressive display saw him make 122 metres while one-time Wire target Ollie Partington made 113.

Three more Salford players reached three figures, with centre Nene Macdonald leading the way with 162 followed by try-scorer Tim Lafai (136) and Deon Cross (109).

The only Warrington players to reach 100 metres were Matt Dufty, who ran for a game-high 186 metres, and wingers Matty Russell (146) and Josh Thewlis (108).

Salford managed to limit the influence of Paul Vaughan and the Wire forwards (Image: SWPix.com)

Another defensive marathon for Nicholson

For the second week in a row, Matty Nicholson made an impressive number of tackles and led the way in defence for Wire.

He topped the tackle charts with 51 including 15 from marker, with four misses, with Danny Walker and Ben Currie close behind on 41 and 38 respectively.

That speaks to the amount of defending Warrington were forced to do, with Salford’s highest tackle figure being the 35 completed by both Shane Wright and Joe Mellor.

Matty Nicholson made more than 50 tackles for the second week running (Image: SWPix.com)