Steve Borthwick has warned England will be heavily punished by Wales on Saturday unless there is an immediate improvement to their "unacceptable" disciplinary record.

England gifted Australia victory in November by conceding a raft of kickable penalties, while Martin Johnson has seen six players sin-binned in the last two games against New Zealand and Italy.

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Discipline has become such a concern in the England camp that the squad have even been training with 14 men this week in case they find themselves short-handed again in Cardiff.

"It is to give players confidence that, should we lose a man, we will not lose anything defensively," explained defence specialist Mike Ford.

England forwards coach John Wells put the sin-binnings against Italy - James Haskell for a trip and Shane Geraghty for taking a man out in the air - down to the impetuosity of youth.

But Borthwick knows England cannot afford to give Wales an attacking foothold this weekend because the defending champions boast the power to blow them out of the water.

"The last two games against Italy and New Zealand we have had sin-bins and we know they are not acceptable. We need to make sure we keep 15 players on the field for the whole game," Borthwick said.

"Playing 20 minutes with a man down makes international rugby much harder. We need to reduce our penalty counts. We need greater levels of discipline and to make better decisions in that area.

"Both of those situations at the weekend were clearly avoidable.

"We have discussed what we need to do as a team and talked about what we deem to be acceptable behaviour and what isn't. We have crossed the line a little bit too often.

"This will be an incredible Test match. It will be immensely hard fought. We need to go out and play to our maximum and we need to ensure we don't give the opposition as many opportunities as they have had.

"If we don't give them opportunities the pressure remains heaped on them."

England succeeded in their main aim last weekend by opening their RBS 6 Nations campaign with a 36-11 victory over the Azzurri, but the performance was again a major cause for concern.

England did succeed in pressuring the Italians into mistakes and earned the majority of their five tries from capitalising on turnover ball, while Mark Cueto rounded off the win with a superb try late on.

England again struggled to earn consistent quick ball and lacked the pace and creativity which Wales showed in their victory over Scotland.

But Borthwick is in bullish mood and views the victory as a platform from which England can build.

"The mood in the group last week was very determined to start the Six Nations as well as we possibly can. We had lost our last three games at Twickenham, which was unacceptable, and we had to put that right," he said.

"Moving on from that there is a great deal of confidence from a lot of the stuff we did very well. We won a Test by five tries to one and we look at the video and see lots of other chances we were creating.

"That gives us confidence that we are creating opportunities. It is up to us to take them.

"We haven't beaten Italy by that many points in a while, England haven't won a Six Nations game by five tries to one in a while. To do that and still know how much better we can play gives us real confidence."