You talk some rubbish to put it kindly

That just about sums up the attitude at Headingley , even some supporters are accepting the below average performances

So with the players we have and the garbage we are signing you expect a play off place , well maybe we will ,but sneaking in to 6th place in this league is hardly a success story

He signed his mate Nene as well , how has that finished up

Well its felt like the wheels were going to fall off for a while, and they have. Next week likely to see a similar result and scoreline as well. Lots of injuries but also the players who have left without being replaced have caused chaos.

We'll no doubt bring in some more signings, but Smith will start next season in the opposite position to this one, with almost a negative goodwill balance. I hope he learns from his mistakes this year, starting with the messing about in pre season and starting the season way off the pace. He'll be under pressure from the first game, as nobody is going to have any illusions about a mid-season turnaround which probably a fair few of us imagined would happen this year.

I hope that our one or two remaining signings will be big names as well. While accepting this is still a transition (and that Smith wasn't responsible for the previous years of that), we need a sign that the club has drawn a line in the sand. I like Miller, and from now on in will give Frawley a chance, but neither of them or Goudemand move the dial much. Without signings to get excited about I wouldn't be surprised if crowds drop off next year.

While Smith (and others) rightly say that the market is tight etc, the fact is that right now Sts and Wigan have far better players on their books than we do. No doubt some of them (especially at Sts) might be on slight unders as they want to win things, but we are fundamentally playing to the same cap. There is no excuse other than poor cap management to not have a team that has the ability to compete with them. Yet I look at the players they have vs us and its night and day in some positions.

Not sure you can say I have the knives out for Smith as I have ben prepared to give him a chance right up to around the 10th game of next season.
My question on the squads is to find if we have a better squad now than we did last year and if we do have a better squad then why are we not doing better?
On the other hand if our squad now is inferior then it goes some way to explaining why we failed to qualify for the playoffs which by our standard should be the minimum one should expect.

Think you’re missing my point.

Was it you at Hull last week?

We don’t have a better squad because 3 of the high level players have left during the season.

If that's referring to Leeming, Austin and Macdonald then your clutching at straws. Two have gone in the last month when the season was already done.

He was hoping you'd forgotten that

I think it’s surprising what a difference a few different players make to a result like yesterday.

Individual errors and a lack of kick pressure were the main difference by all accounts early on: we apply better pressure to Wigan early and tire them out in the heat it could be a very different game.

We don’t have those difference-making players yet. I still think we might need a 9 as well as a 7.

Are you blaming Smith for him not returning? I don't think anyone saw that coming.

Well, at least we tried hard...

Actually, I think that's part of the problem. We think we try hard, but actually were not doing the 1%ers that make the difference. We know this team has errors in it, lots of them, but we don't appear to be working on technique or decision making to stop those errors from happening. Coming off the field gassed isn't the only measure of working hard.

Well….
You can’t go up against a well drilled, motivated and red hot team in the goons and just not do the basics correctly.

There are massive mitigating factors that put us in this position to start with players out / injured / AWOL.
Younger squad players thrust into the team when not quite ready.
And of course a very lopsided, miss-firing team in general.

We’ve been off the pace ALL season, we squandered pre season on gimmicks, we haven’t put one 80min performance in yet with x2 games to go and we’ve taken shortcuts when we really shouldn’t have.

Is this all smiths fault? No.
Is this all Hetherington’s fault? No.
This is a culmination of years of poor club decisions stretching back nearly a decade.
We’ve complained for a while about deadwood in the team and tbf to Rohan he’s certainly bottomed out the team just as we asked, this has to be the low point in this process as more performances like that are understandable but unacceptable.
He now needs heavily backing getting decent difference making leaders and players in and rebuilding from scratch. This has been needed for a long while, it’s painful but it’s badly needed.

Well it was his signing but we have a history of these type of players

No it was not me , fortunately i can't make Saturdays , my point was you saying it is just a game !

Good balanced post that. Completely agree.

Yep, me too

The only part of Swarcliffe's post I'd take issue with is saying its not all GH's fault but then pointing out its the culmination of poor decisions back almost a decade. While not "all" his fault clearly the bulk of the blame for that period has to go with the senior decision-maker who has been there the whole time? I genuinely can't think of many big decisions that he's made in recent years that have been good in the long term (unless you include getting rid of coaches he appointed in the first place before we actually got relegated)?

I'm still going to back Smith for next season, as I think we have to show some sense of long-term focus. I only hope the players leaving during the season - which I think must be almost unique in modern history at Leeds? - is just part of the bottoming out process and not a sign of something worse with him as coach.

I do think RS can be better judged either way next season. With his men in, his idea of dead wood largely gone, a full pre-season then we really need to be better next season.

We won’t get as many chances like this to sweep a broom through and have as much cap/quota/marquee available in one season and we need to see the master plan emerging.

We also need those spine players here and in training from the start of pre-season.

Christopher can't see much wrong with anything. Let me tell him the whole club on the pitch side is an utter embarrassment and will b until Hetherington pis£ies off. Penny pinching old Draconian git he is.

We weren`t doing that well when they were here and like it`s already been said 2 of our better players left the club less than 3 weeks ago.
So basically we are saying we have a better squad now but have failed to make the play offs this year but got to a GF with an inferior squad last season admittedly both squads coached by Smith.

There's a saying you can't polish a turd but you can wrap it in glitter I believe that is the coaches job but Rohan is fresh out of glitter.

My issue is... what If things don't improve next season? Then we have to go through yet another "rebuilding phase" the season after.... vicious circle...