RICHARD Cockerill never had many illusions about how hard it was going to be to turn Edinburgh into a winning team. He has emphasised that in just about every interview. "I was right wasn’t I? Unfortunately," he pointed out as he sat down to analyse what went wrong last weekend and work out if it can be corrected before the team travel to play the current champions.

He knows, the players know, the fans know that there is no way they should be losing at home to Benetton Treviso. Even the Italian club's officials and coaches seemed a bit stunned by their achievement in beating Edinburgh at Myreside last weekend.

"We showed a lot of the traits that have done us over the past few years so it was very disappointing. Very much points lost. We were too easy to play against. It was not good enough by a long way," Cockerill accepted.

Nor was he prepared to excuse himself from the general criticism: "I’m responsible because I’m the coach," he said. "Maybe I didn’t prepare the side well enough. We’ll have a hard look at how we train and what I do, because it’s not always the players’ fault – we’re having a look at everything.

“I’m not accepting, and the players shouldn’t accept, that level of performance, because we’re better than that – that’s the most disappointing part.”

There have been times when the officiating would have been a target, but Cockerill is also refusing to go down that line of thinking.

Two key decisions did go against them – Treviso had two props sin binned at the end, denying Edinburgh the chance to scrum for a penalty try in the final seconds, and Jason Harries, the wing, is convinced he got the ball down for a try but there was no video referee and, watching it live, the officials thought he lost control just before the ball hit the ground – but there were no complaints.

"You can’t defend that poorly and softly and let easy points in," Cockerill said, preferring to target the 19 turnovers his players conceded. "We can’t play as individuals. We have to play as a team. We work as a team and we have to deliver what we practise. If we had done no preparation and just rocked up expecting to win, we would be less disappointed."

This was a return to the bad side of Edinburgh that has dominated for several seasons. They had shown some promise in pre-season games and in the league opener in Cardiff, but as soon as there was any reason for optimism, the passion, ferocity and cohesion disappeared.

“We had a robust meeting on what I expect, and where we need to be, and how I expect them to prepare and behave around performance," Cockerill added. "Consistency of performance has got to be our key – it’s easy to do it once or twice, but can you do it 25 times a year as a player? That’s the sweet spot that we’ve got to meet.

“Some guys can do that already. Some guys clearly can’t. So we had a pretty honest and robust discussion around some of those things."

That is a stark warning for the players. If they don't shape up, they can expect to he shipped out. Cockerill is perfectly prepared to change the players who cannot or will not live up to his standards for new ones who will – and that includes the big-name internationalists in the squad.

After a performance like that, you would like to think there is inevitably going to be a reaction this weekend. If complacency played any role in last week's display then playing the Scarlets on their home patch should rule out any repeat. On top of that, the scale of the challenge facing a side that includes a number of British & Irish Lions plus the Scotland captain should energise even the most jaded Edinburgh player.

"I’m never expecting anything ever again!" was Cockerill's response. "We’ll train as well as we can this week. We’ll put a good side out and I expect us to stay in the battle and try and win. How realistic that is – we’ll see. This team has a reputation of really poor performances and then beating the good sides so I hope that continues.

"Scarlets are very strong across the board with internationals and Lions. They play a very good brand of rugby that’s difficult to play against. You let them get on the front foot and play with ball in hand over the gain line then it’s very difficult.

"We have to defend better than we did on Friday, we’ve got to front up like we did against Cardiff and we’ve got to go another step. If we don’t it’ll be an uncomfortable afternoon."

If Friday turns out to be a salutary lesson that the team learn from, it could work out well in the long run. After all, the last Edinburgh coach to have any league success was Andy Robinson, from 2007 to 2009, and it was seven matches after he was appointed before Edinburgh won. Despite that, they still went on to finish fourth that season and second second the year after that.