Wasps lost a Premiership game at the Ricoh Arena for the first time as Saracens deservedly recorded a 26-17 victory in Coventry.

The defeat, which didn’t look on the cards when the hosts were 17-3 up after 20 minutes, sees the black and golds drop out of the top four and down to sixth in the table.

Both Goodes, Andy and Alex, kicked penalties early on for their respective sides before Christian Wade somehow managed to ground the ball for Wasps first try as he furiously chased down his own grubber-kick into the right corner.

The wing had his legs in touch as he caught up with the ball and slid in to score, but the 23-year-old was awarded the try as he wasn’t carrying the ball as he got his hand to it. Wasps fly-half Goode then superbly converted the try from the touchline, and he was on target from a kinder angle just a minute later when Elliot Daly scored a superb individual try.

The centre received the ball from Goode ten metres inside his own half and began sprinting down the Saracens right before cutting back and accelerating past a couple of defenders before diving over.

A crowd of 16,874 were right behind the home side, but they would not see Wasps add another point in the remainder of the contest as Saracens wrestled control and never looked like handing it back.

Jackson Wray and Chris Wyles both went in for scores, which were converted by Goode, before the break and a penalty from the visiting fly-half made took the score to 20-17.

With just seconds left of the first 40 minutes Wasps had a chance to go in level as Goode lined up a near straight kick from 40 metres out, but the kicker pushed his effort wide and the hosts trailed at the break.

Saracens dominated the second half, even after losing Chris Ashton to a yellow card moments after the restart, and added to their total with two more penalties from Goode to seal a deserved victory.

“We’re frustrated and disappointed as you’d imagine,” said Wasps director of rugby Dai Young.

“We knew what to expect coming into this game, Saracens play a simple yet effective game plan - kick the ball in the air and chase really hard and during the first 20 minutes we defused their bombs. If you diffuse them, you can play off them, which was the case for the first 25 minutes.

“Certainly after that we struggled and failed to deal with their aerial bombardment. We dropped the ball and they’re very good at squeezing you and getting things out of you if you don’t control the air, which we didn’t.

“I think we dropped four or five catchable kicks and made a number of handling errors, which put us under extra pressure. It’s frustrating but we need to lick our wounds and move on really.”

He added: “Whether we’d won or lost today, we’re still a work in progress. If we’d won, it doesn’t mean we are a great team, if we lost, it doesn’t mean we are a bad team.

“We are working hard to be the team we all want to be and our target hasn’t changed from the start of the season – to be a top six team this season, which we can build on next season. We’re still in that battle, although we’re obviously disappointed not to have come away with another win today.

“We still have plenty of things to work on and we know that. Saracens are a unique team to play. They don’t play a lot of rugby, so they also don’t make a lot of mistakes. You know what’s coming and you have to match it. Today we didn’t do that.”