McLaughlin's men started the season in impressive fashion with three straight victories only to fall to two defeats in the space of six days in Wales to the Ospreys and the Dragons respectively.
Those losses however came without 14 players who are either injured or involved in the World Cup, with McLaughlin forced to rely on the club's youngsters, particularly behind the scrum.
But with reinforcements arriving for their Friday night fixture against Treviso, McLaughlin believes the club will benefit in the long run from their mini slump.
He said: "It was a poor display [against the Dragons] but from the point of view that we had a very young backline out and a little bit of inexperience.
"It is a huge learning curve for those guys as it was the week before and maybe we did not learn the lessons from the Ospreys game leading into the Dragons game.
"It was poor but I think the experience in our backline if we maybe had a Darren Cave in there or maybe had a Humph [Ian Humphreys] in there just to give us more direction and we would have been better.
"Further on down the line, those two games with those young guys will stand us in very good stead for the future.
"We started the season exceptionally well and we were very pleased with our first three wins.
"They were two disappointing losses, but it's just two losses. Two poor displays don't make us a bad team.
"We know we're a very good team and we'll be looking to do our damnedest to get back into that top four on Friday night."
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