Gloucester director of rugby David Humphreys was delighted to see his side end their recent slump with a 21-9 win at London Irish despite a hugely unconvincing display at the Madejski Stadium.

The visitors made hard work of defeating a poor London Irish side but tries from Henry Purdy and Steve McColl proved sufficient as the Cherry and Whites departed with the points.

Greg Laidlaw kicked three penalties and a conversion to complete the Gloucester scoring, with three penalties from Shane Geraghty being the Exiles' only reply.

"We dug deep and showed a huge amount of character to come away with four vital points," Humphreys said.

"We are creating opportunities but we are not taking enough of them and are not showing sufficient precision."

The win enabled Gloucester to maintain their spot in the middle of the Aviva Premiership table which Humphreys conceded was important.

"Every win is important as the middle positions are very condensed," he said.

"It's vital that we stay in touch and having our England players back next week will bring us huge momentum as we also want to do well in Europe."

Humphreys singled out Gloucester captain Matt Kvesic for his impressive display.

"Matt picked up an injury early in the season but following his return; he's been getting better and better and becoming increasingly confident. If he continues to perform like this, he'll be pushing hard to be back with England," he said.

Humphreys' positivity was in stark contrast to his Irish counterpart, Brian Smith, who was very downcast at his side's poor display.

"We are very disappointed; there were inaccuracies across the board. We have no one to blame but ourselves and we just have to be better," he said.

This was Irish's fifth consecutive defeat during November as their early-season form seems to have deserted them.

"We are in a pretty bad space right now," Smith added.

"We've got to stick together and avoid people blaming each other. The boys are trying their hearts out and today I rolled the dice by bringing back six players to give us energy but we are clearly under pressure and are too inaccurate."

Irish could have been closer on the final scoreboard but captain Geraghty opted not to kick a couple of penalties in favour of more attacking options.

"Early doors we could have kicked a penalty but I don't have a problem with the decision. We back on-field decisions made by the captain and I'm happy with aggressive choices," added Smith.