Toby Booth says it would be foolish to write off Harlequins' top-four chances ahead of Bath Rugby's trip to the Aviva Premiership champions this weekend.
Bath travel to The Stoop tomorrow (2.15pm) to take on a Quins side who have lost each of their last three league fixtures.
The Londoners' Heineken Cup hopes also came to an end when they were beaten 18-12 at home by Munster in the quarter-finals last Sunday, although they did win the LV= Cup last month.
Bath also suffered European disappointed at the weekend and first-team coach Booth says Quins will not be taken lightly despite the champions' recent dip in from.
"I'm sure they are doing a bit of soul searching to get back on track but they are in a very strong position and are a very, very good side full of very, very good players," said Booth.
"They will be in the top four. I don't see any reason why they won't be.
"I think they've got two home games as well, so they'll certainly be targeting those games to be in charge of their own destiny.
"But that's them and we can only deal with what we can control, which is our own preparation and our own performance."
Tomorrow's trip to The Stoop starts a run of Bath's final three Premiership fixtures against the top three sides. Next week they host Leicester Tigers before travelling to leaders Saracens on the final day.
Although facing a stiff challenge to achieve the target of a top-six finish in the league, Booth drew inspiration from Bath's 21-18 victory over Quins in the reverse fixture earlier this season.
"We potentially could have had the last three games against three Heineken Cup semi-finalists if results had gone a different way," said Booth.
"On paper of course it's tough. We've got those three and we are only at home once.
"We can look at the mathematics but we know if we get two decent performances and two decent results the chances are we are going to be in the final shake-up. That's ultimately what it's all about.
"To miss out wouldn't be great but, to be fair to [owner] Bruce [Craig], he is very realistic and this is part of a bigger picture as well for him.
"We are here to succeed and we will see not qualifying for Heineken Cup as a failure, no question about that, but we also have got one eye on where we are going to go over the next two to three years.
"Irrespective of a few scores we've actually been playing much better since Christmas and we have scored a lot of points in the second half of the season.
"We managed to overcome Quins at home when they were on a very good run, which is encouraging, but we certainly aren't underestimating the difficulty of the task that we've got."
Dave Attwood is fit to return to the Bath pack having missed the last two games through injury but Matt Banahan and Carl Fearns remain on the sidelines.
Semesa Rokoduguni and Mat Gilbert are in contention to return having been unavailable for European selection.
"Banners and Carl won't be fit this weekend but Dave's been okay and it's is a bonus to get him back," added Booth.
