Saracens captain Ben Earl hailed the resilience of his side as they staged a remarkable recovery to beat Northampton 45-39 and preserve their unbeaten Gallagher Premiership record in a thrilling match at the StoneX Stadium.

Leaders Saracens had won their previous eight league matches this season but they looked down and out when they trailed 39-17 to a rampant Saints side after only 52 minutes.

Saracens' cause was not helped by the loss of Max Malins and three front-rowers to injury, which resulted in considerable disruption and passive scrums but they overcame this handicap to move 15 points clear at the top of the table.

Man of the match Earl said: "Everything seemed to be against us and to get the win was a testament to our resilience and team spirit.

"We rolled with the punches in the middle 40 of the game and then managed to dig ourselves out in the last 20."

Sean Maitland scored two tries for the hosts, while Gareth Simpson, Josh Hallett, Earl and Elliot Daly claimed the others, with Alex Goode kicking a penalty and five conversions as Alex Lozowski added a conversion.

Fraser Dingwall scored a hat-trick of tries for Saints with Mike Haywood and Courtney Skosan also on the try-scoring sheet. Finn Smith added four conversions and two penalties.

Saracens head coach Joe Shaw praised the efforts of Earl, who must wonder what he needs to do to be a member of Eddie Jones' England squad.

Shaw said: "He's such a bright star and a fantastic performer. We have given him the captaincy in the last two or three weeks and he's thrived on it and grown in stature even more."

But Shaw stressed the importance of playing to the whistle, adding: "The key feature is that you never ever stop fighting or believing as, even with four minutes left, we still believed.

"Behind the posts after 56 minutes and 22 points down, we stressed there's still so much time to play and as a result we go and score 28 unanswered points.

"Yes, we were unlucky with injuries and a few tough calls but you have to accept them as part of life and move on and stay focused on your game-plan."

It was a different story in the Northampton camp with director of rugby Phil Dowson unhappy at the way his team folded.

He said: "It's very hard to sum up without using expletives as we were very good and then very poor.

"It's as disappointing as I've been since I've been coaching, especially when we manage to lose all the momentum we had in that game.

"We are not dealing with yellow cards as well as other sides and it's costing us wins as rightly, safety is a major factor in modern rugby.

"So far this season, we have been inconsistent and therefore not good enough but I'm not disheartened as we are playing some good stuff.

"There have been some great individual efforts but we need to create a team performance."