Murphy added that a play-off spot is “still attainable and in our control” as they prepare to face a Scarlets side with former Ulster coaching staff Dwayne Peel and Jared Payne in their ranks.
“We would have been expected to be further up the table at this stage but we’ve had quite a lot of losses where it’s been one or two points or we were right in the game,” Murphy explained.
“We have to concentrate one game at a time at this stage of the year and that starts this weekend with Scarlets. It doesn’t get much tougher.
“I don’t think it would be a disaster [to fail to qualify for the Champions Cup] but it would be something we’d really want to chase. The club has always been in the top flight and at this stage we obviously wouldn’t want that to change.”
The Ulster head coach welcomes back players from Ireland and Ireland ‘A’ duty for this weekend’s encounter as his side tries to arrest their poor league form.
“We’ve had a tough run. Some of that has to do with inconsistency in selection due to a lot of injuries but at the same time when we pick a team to go out and play we expect the performance to be at a certain level.
“In the first half in Benetton I actually thought we did pretty well but lost our way a little bit in the second half on the back of a little bit of indiscipline. With three yellow cards in the second half it’s very difficult to win a game at that stage.
“Games before that, they weren’t good enough, we weren’t at a level we would expect.”