After exiting the Champions Cup last weekend, Edinburgh must transfer the form they exhibited in Europe onto the domestic front tonight in order to stay in Pro14 play-off contention according to their head coach.

Richard Cockerill has seen his side win just once away from home in the Pro14 this season, in stark contrast to winning two of the three Champions Cup matches they played away from home this season and claiming a bonus point in the other one against French Top 14 and English Premiership opposition.

Facing last season’s Champions Cup semi-finalists, he knows they cannot afford another slip-up at the Scarlets tonight, but believes they have shown they can raise their game for the end-of-season run-in.

“We have not been great on the road,” he said. “We have had some big wins in Europe on the road but we have only beaten Glasgow away from home in the league. We are more than capable… if we can go to Toulon, or go to Newcastle or go to Glasgow we are capable of doing it.”

The Scarlets have won only three of their last nine matches in the Pro14 and while Cockerill expects them to field a much stronger team than they have at any stage this year, he is hoping his players can benefit from having played tough matches over the past two weeks.

“We have trained for them to bring back all their main players, they have not played together while we have had a couple of run outs including last week,” he said. “They have been resting their guys and hopefully it will take them a little while to find their rhythm while we will be straight into it. We have got to be very good.

“If you look at that Scarlets team, they have had an average season by their standards but this is probably the first time they have picked what is probably a full-strength side for them. They are a good side, they have not done what they have done over the last four or five years without being a good side and there are a lot of players in that team who were in the Welsh team that won the Grand Slam.”

Having made his Edinburgh just a fortnight ago, some nine months after leaving the Scarlets to join them, John Barclay’s presence has the potential to give his new team an edge on his return to Llanelli.

“He has given us a bit of insight into how they look at the game and what they are likely to do, but obviously it is a bit different to when he was there,” said Cockerill. “We have to concentrate on ourselves too and get our bits right. Look, John’s leadership has been really good, he has been playing well and we have some real depth there. He is looking forward to going back for obvious reasons.”

Scarlets had a week off last weekend, while Edinburgh were battling out their Champions Cup quarter-final against Munster and have made just a single enforced change, with international centre Mark Bennett recalled because James Johnstone has been ruled out with a calf injury.

The Six Nations period has also seen Edinburgh drop vital points, but for all that he is taking steps to try to minimise the risk of that happening again, notably in recruiting a quartet of overseas players to bolster their ranks for next season, Cockerill has no complaints and accepts that they will only have themselves to blame if they miss out on a play-off place, having thrown away opportunities to win matches.

“We are the victims of our own success to a degree,” he observed.”We have done well and the environment is strong and a lot of guys have been picked for the national team, which is great but the consequence is that we are having to take guys on loan and have academy guys coming in to full spots in the 23 when we are in international windows.

“Part of that is that it makes us weaker. It creates opportunities but is not helpful from a depth point of view. Also some of those games, we should have done better. In the league we can’t lose at Kings when we have an eight point lead with six or seven minutes to go, we can’t be 17-0 up against Cardiff and get beaten 17-19.

“It won’t be this week that gets us out of the top three, it will be what has happened before but there are some mitigating circumstances around that. If we are going to have so many Test players away on a regular basis we are going to have to try to build a deeper squad.”